SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS 

VOLUME 59, NUMBER 19 



EARLY NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA 

With Ten Plates 



BY 
WILLIAM H, BABCOCK 







(Publication 21 38) 



CITY OF WASHINGTON 

PUBLISHED BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 

1913 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS 



VOLUME 59, NUMBER 19 



EARLY NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA 

With Ten Plates 



BY 
WILLIAM H. BABCOCK 



7Z2, 




(Publication 21 58) 



CITY OF WASHINGTON 

PUBLISHED BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 

1913 






'i 



mf\f\fif 



BALTIMORE, MD., U. S. A. 



D. OF D. 
JUL 22 1913 



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CONTENTS PAGE 

The New World Prelude I 

The Old World Prelude 7 

The Mythical Islands of the Atlantic 16 

The Problem of Great Ireland 26 

The Colonization of Greenland 30 

The Voyages of Madoc and the Zeno Brothers 35 

Are There Norse Relics in North America? 43 

Certain Collateral Items of,Evidence 54 

The Three Sagas and Their Relative Status 64 

The Most Authentic Wineland History 76 

The Story of the First American Mother 81 

Lei f and His Voyages 87 

With Thorfinn and Gudrid to the Bay of Fundy 96 

Their Wineland Vojage Interpreted 106 

The Expedition to Hop 124 

Concerning the Natives 139 

Review of Dr. Nansen's Conclusions 159 

General Survey 169 

Notes 176 

Partial Bibliography 179 

Index _ 191 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PLATES FACE PAGE 

1-2. Parts of Map of Pizigani Brothers, 1367 16 

3. Part of Catalan Map, 1375 16 

4. Part of Map of Battista Beccaria, 1435 16 

5. Part of Map of Matheus Prunes, 1553 22 

6. Map of Sigurdr Stefansson, 1570 62- 

7-8. The Gokstad Ship 100 

9. Route Map of Thorfinn Karlsefni's Expedition 106 

10. Map of Mount Hope Bay 136 



EARLY NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA. 

By WILLIAM H. BABCOCK 
(With Ten Plates) 

In the rather long continued labor of preparing this monograph, the 
author has had occasion to recognize gratefully the kindly willingness 
of scientific men and of scholars generally to extend a helping hand. 
He would especially mention the philological assistance of Mr. Juul 
Dieserud and his patient oral translation of the writings of Dr.Nansen 
and others before their appearance in English ; the helpful criticism 
of my manuscript by Prof, Julius E. Olson ; the explanation by the 
late Dr. W J McGee of the observed progressive changes of level 
along our seaboard by glacial recession and resultant continuing 
crustal wave action — a theory since corroborated by other authorities 
— which affords a reasonably trustworthy conception of the American 
Atlantic coast line and its conditions about the year looo A. D., and 
thus throws new light on the regions and special places intended by 
the names in the saga ; the efficient aid of Mr. James Mooney in Gaelic 
and Indian problems ; and the sympathetic interest of Mr. David 
Hutcheson who has furnished a copious supply of data on the subject 
supplemented by some personal field-work near one possible Hop of 
the Norsemen. 

I.— THE NEW WORLD PRELUDE 

Concerning the discovery of America before Columbus, there 
are many theories, fancies, and claims ; but only two visits can be 
considered historic, namely, those of Leif Ericsson and Thorfinn 
Karlsefni. The Wineland or Vinland of these explorers has been 
so greatly misunderstood and has been made the basis of so much 
elaborate and contradictory explanation during the past three cen- 
turies that only the hope of clearing matters a little by patient research 
would perhaps justify one in adding to its volume. The importance 

Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 59, No. 19 



2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

and permanent interest of the topic really demand the careful applica- 
tion of every available test. 

Obviously we must aim to distinguish the true narrative from 
less reliable accretions and competitors. We must also ascertain as 
nearly as possible the condition of the American shoreline at the 
period to which the statements of the sagas apply. These are the 
prime requirements, and yet whatever else may throw any liglU.•:c€^ 
the matter should not be neglected. .vl-^v .-2. 

A preliminary glance is perhaps needful at what preceded- -tbeV 
appearance of the Norsemen in the New World. In a fundamental 
sense the title " New World " is deserved, for science and the most 
venerated writings agree in ascribing priority of human life to the 
other hemisphere, though their reasons differ widely. Most anthro- 
pologists believe that man first walked over to America ; — from Eu- 
rope as Dr. Brinton ^ supposed, from Asia as many others have 
claimed — but in either case the route was at one, if not both, of the 
far northern corners of tlie continent. The crossing .is- indeed -occa-"- 
sionally made in winter at the present day on the ice at Bering 
Straits, as reported to Dr. Dall,' and in summer by boat almost at 
will. However, no traces have yet been discovered of such passage 
from Iceland or any other possible stepping stone on the eastern 
side.^ But even the earliest coming, however remote, must have been 
rather late in the history of our race, an unarmored, ill-equipped off- 
spring of the tropics, which had a long way to travel by slow de- 
grees. The immigration may have been in a small way and often 
repeated. Whoever came first to America, however, or whence they 
came, or when, we have in the present inquiry to deal only with the 
Eskimo and their southern neighbors. When Europeans finally lifted 
the Atlantic curtain, the Eskimo were found as far south as the upper 
end of Newfoundland ; they clung to the sea-shore almost everywhere. 

Below these Innuit along the coast, and behind their southeastern 
wing in Labrador, as well as nearly everywhere throughout the 
temperate parts of the continent, there were other uncivilized men 



' D. G. Brinton: The American Race, (igoi). p. 2,2. 

'W. H. Dall: The Origin of the Innuit; in The Tribes of the Extreme 
Northwest, p. 97. 

•' C. R. Markham : Origin and Migrations of the Greenland Eskimo; in 
Arctic Papers for Expedition of 1875, p. 166. See also W. H. Holmes : Some 
Problems of the American Race. Amer. Anthrop., vol. 12, no. 2 (191 0), p. 178 
Cf. A. Geike : Fragments of Earth Lore, p. 263. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 3 

in various stages of development, v^hom we habitually call Indians 
by misnomer, although " Amerind " ^ has won a place in scientific 
writing. These, or the dominant racial elements of them, appear to 
have come into North America from the regions near and behind 
these natural crossing-places above Japan, where tribes are yet found,' 
chiefly in mountainous insulated or nearly insulated homes of refuge, 
so like our wild native people that we should call them Indian without 
question if bodily shifted here. Whether this eastward human wave 
preceded, followed, or accompanied the Eskimo ; what their reciprocal 
action and relations may have been until the first known distribution 
of races and territory was established ; and whether the tribes of 
Saghalien and Kamchatka above referred to were left behind or have 
forced their way through the Eskimo and across the sea to their 
present seats,^ are matters debatable which need not concern us here. 
These Indians could not have been on the ground for a very great 
number of centuries or the population would have been denser, the 
linguistic stocks more plentiful. In the immense area between the 
Arctic Ocean, the Rocky Mountains, the Gulf of ^Mexico, and the 
Atlantic there were barely a half dozen principal linguistic families * 
^the Athapascan, Shoshonean, Algonquian, Siouan, Iroquoian, and 
Muskogean. These people, however, had undergone varied experi- 
ences ; ° therefore they differed widely here and there : yet they were 
enough alike to give us the accepted ideal Indian of our coinage. 
These few vigorous groups have made nearly all of North American 
history on the Indian side. 

The long list of languages in North America, so often insisted on, 
include some that appear to be but of minor flecks and patches on 
the western border of our linguistic map, resembling nothing so much 
as the debris of waves that had struck without force to pass on, and 
of human fragments in the mountain nooks above the Isthmus. They 
all have their own abundant interest, but it does not concern our 



^ Other substitutes will hardly do. Red Indian, for example, has meant 
Beothuk specifically. Even American Indian means Passamaquoddy, but not 
Micmac, on Grand Manan. 

^C. H. Hawes : In the Uttermost East, p. 35. Cf. Geo. Kennan : Tent Life 
in Siberia, p. 171. Also his Siberia and the Exile System vol. 2, p. 400; and 
Mythology of the Koryak (Jochelson). Amer. Anthrop. (1904), vol. 6, p. 413. 

^ A. F. , Chamberlain : Origin of American Aborigines. — Linguistics. Amer. 
Anthrop. (1912), vol. 14, p. 55- 

* See map in Bulletin 30, pt. i, Bureau of American Ethnology. 

* See Notes to Chapter 16. 



4 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

present inquiry ; nor does the much debated problem of the semi- 
civiHzations, extending in a long line from central Mexico to Chile 
down the uplands of that front of our double continent which looks 
ever toward the primal Asian centers of human culture. 

Excepting at or near its narrowest part, the two sea-shores of 
North America were as two different worlds. There was never 
anything even semi-civilized along either of the§e shores in the 
Wineland latitudes ; nothing much above stark savagery near that 
portion of the Atlantic shore, even with a liberal inclusion of territory 
to the southward. Population was indeed almost unbelievably scanty. 
No other part of that region was quite so bountifully supplied by 
Nature as Powhatan's domain near the Chesapeake, yet Strachey's^ 
miniature census, river by river and town by town, has a really 
ridiculous, though pathetic, look. The best recent estimate^ gives 
not more than seventeen thousand Indian inhabitants to all Virginia 
at that time, with 8,500 for the Powhatan Confederacy; and there 
may be a thousand of mixed blood there now — Chickahominys, Nanse- 
monds, Pamunkeys, Mattaponies and other remnants — hardly noticed 
at all. The City of Washington, with its present population of 
350,000, was prefigured by an important Indian town, which in an 
emergency could muster eighty fighting men for the defense of the 
finest shad and herring fisheries to be found anywhere. 

The League of the Five Nations (central New York) could hardly 
put two thousand men into the field ; yet this active little force imposed 
terror on most of the settlements between Hudson Bay and Georgia 
and between New England and the Mississippi. Along Narragansett 
Bay and slightly beyond, the density of population may have been 
somewhat greater ; but King Philip in his most formidable estate 
could never assemble any imposing array. A few Englishmen sufficed 
to storm and ruin the fortified chief towns of the Pequots and 
Narragansets, the most powerful tribes about them. The upper 
New England coast was far more scantily peopled, as clearly appears 
from the slightly earlier notes of Champlain. 

We have no trustworthy ground for assuming a substantially dif- 
ferent state of affairs for the year looo A. D. along the Atlantic coast, 
although at that time there seems to have been a relatively large and 



'W. Strachey: The Historic of Travaile into Virginia, pp. 40 ct seq. 
*J. Mooney : The Powhatan Confederacy. Amer. Anthrop. (1907), pp. 
130, 132. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 5 

advanced Indian population^ in the Ohio valley and beyond. These 
" mound-builders," of debated tribal and linguistic affiliations, appear 
to have worked up the great rivers from the south and remained a 
long time in distinct and differing nations or communities, at last 
withdrawing or being scattered rather mysteriously. It is well known 
that they left great earthworks behind them apd other notable 
vestiges ; but they may not have been known on the seaboard more 
definitely than they are to-day. 

The Athapascan, Shoshonean, Muskhogean. and other remote 
stocks are clearly beyond our field of vision. Mr. Lloyd ' would put 
the Iroquois also at the time we are considering too far away in the 
northwest : but according to Dr. McGee's Chesapeake tidewater theory 
they were much nearer.^ Still, no one places them on or near the sea- 
board in northern latitudes. The Sioux may have been in force along 
the eastern watershed of the Appalachian mountains, where we find 
them later, apparently losing ground ; but they probably never crossed 
the Delaware. This narrows the field to the Eskimo, the Beothuk, the 
Algonquian tribes, and possible unknown predecessors, for the stretch 
of coast between Baffin-Land and the Chesapeake. 

Below the Gulf of St. Lawrence we find this shore occupied in the 
early seventeenth century, and apparently in the fifteenth and six- 
teenth, by different tribes of the Algonquian family, the Micmac or 
Souriquois extending farthest to the northeast as they do now. On 
the island of Newfoundland* were the quite distinct and puzzling 
Beothuk, doubtfully struggling to hold their ground against the 
encroachments of the Eskimo on the north and of the ]\Iicmac on the 
southwest. 

There are some indications that these islanders had previously 
occupied parts of Maine and Nova Scotia. They appear with the air 
of people in misfortune, clinging to their last refuge and sharing some 
characteristics of their oppressors on both sides. A fuller under- 
standing of their earlier history might be helpful in the solution of 
divers northeastern problems in ethnology. But there seems to be 
nothing to indicate that they ever established themselves far below the 



' N. S. Shaler: Nature and Man in America, p. 8r. 

* Lloyd's notes in L. H. Morgan's "The League of the Iroquois," p. 188. 

* W J AIcGee : The Siouan Indians, 15th Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. p. 189. 
*D. G. Brinton : The American Race (1901), p. 67. Cf. Capt. Cartwright 

and his Journal. Repub. igii. First 20 pages. (Ed. by C. W. Townsend). 
Also Whitbourne. Cormack and others hereinafter cited. 



6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

Bay of Fundy, and there is nothing whatever that looks Hke an 
Eskimo extension southward, except a tool or so and one or two very 
doubtful river names, reported by Thalbitzer,^ all on the northern 
border of New Brunswick, which, if really Innuit in origin, would 
be sufficiently accounted for by occasional southward explorations 
or harryings. That any Eskimo ever left the St. Lawrence basin to 
dwell in a more southerly region is an assumption based on no 
evidence whatever. Their long established habits would oppose any 
considerable return toward warmth and away from snow-banks, 
whales, and seals. 

For predecessors of the Algonquian tribes we have equally no data ; 
nor do we know when the latter first arrived on the Atlantic shore. 
Most investigators agree in placing their origin north of the St. 
Lawrence River. They seem to be an ancient people. Very likely 
they worked down from that valley by way of the lesser rivers — the 
Hudson, Connecticut, Housatonic, Kennebec, Penobscot, and St. John. 
There seems to be nothing to make such a migration before 1000 
A. D. at all improbable, though it might be incomplete. 

The year looo, however, for America, seems very far back in 
antiquity. Perhaps we hardly realize how much of what we consider 
ancient was then yet in the future. The Mayas" no doubt were 
established in some cities of the Usumacinta Valley and Honduras, 
. though hardly anywhere in Yucatan ; the Inca conquests may have 
begun, but can hardly have been pressed very far ; the Aztecs perhaps 
had not yet even heard of the Valley of jMexico. Since there is so 
much to be learned about the origin of these higher cultures, it is 
small wonder that we are in the dark or twilight as to ruder tribes, 
which have left neither records nor monuments. It is not probable 
that we have even a pictograph on the Atlantic coast which has en- 
dured for nine hundred years, and if one could be found it would per- 
haps represent no more than some passing caprice of the Indian mind. 

From this point of view we can only say that Algonquian tribes 
were in possession as far back as we know and that the burden of 
proof must be on those who suggest any others— ff fortiori, the milder 
burden of presenting at least some modicum of evidence tending to 
show either predecessors or temporary displacement and supplanting. 



* The Eskimo Language, p. 20. 

" Morley : The Correlation of Maya and Christian Chronology. Amer. Journ. 
Archeol. (1910), p. 193. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK J 

2.— THE OLD WORLD PRELUDE 

Humboldt ^ implied, and Fiske " and others have since explicitly 
suggested, that there may have been many pre-Columbian voyages 
to America of which no record has been discovered. On the Pacific 
coast indications of such voyages survive in the presence of the 
cocoa palm, which is found in America as well as in Asia and on 
islands all the way across, and which antedates the period of the 
earliest recorded visitors to the New World, though never planted by 
unassisted nature, so far as we know ; ^ in local legends of the landing 
of sea-tribes on the South American coast ; * in the evident Mongolian 
features of certain minor northwestern littoral tribes,' and some 
peculiarities of the language of others, apparently Polynesian ; ' 
in the architecture and sculpture of ancient Mayan cities, for example, 
the Chinese or Cambodian-like figures of Copan,' and in the extra- 
ordinary similarity of the whole series of the signs of the Zodiac 
in Greece and Babylon, Mexico and Peru.^ 

The eastern gates also have their indirect evidences of approach in 
a variety of forms which are mutually confirmatory and of unde- 
niable cumulative importance, though not yet amounting to full proof. 
Thus, in Humboldt's Examen Critique," we find a few instances, at 
widely separated periods, of strange men and boats arriving, appar- 
ently from the west, on the outlying European islands. He never 
visited these places, and close investigation of these tales at so late a 
time was impossible ; but he seems to have given them some credit. 
No doubt they lend a slight degree of support to the sailor story in 
the Zeno narrative, the Phenician legend of Diodorus quoted in Dr. 



' Examen Critique, vol. 5 ; in considering the Voyage of Madoc. 
-The Discovery of America, vol. i, pp. 181-185. 
^O. F. Cook in Amer. Anthrop., 1909, p. 486. 

* Justin Winsor: Narr. and Crit. Hist, of America, vol. i, p. 82, note. 

*H. H. Bancroft: Races of the Pacific States, vol. i, p. 225. Cf. W. H. 
Dall : Tribes of the Extreme Northwest, p. 237. 

^C. Hill-Tout: Oceanic Origin of, etc. Trans. Royal Soc. Can., Sec. 2, vol.4 
(1898). 

'Thomas and McGee : Pre-historic North America, p. 256 (vol. 19 Lee's 
Hist, of America). Also Stephens: Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, 
(see Catherwood's views), and The American Egypt, bj' Arnold and Frost, 
pp. 213 and 269. 

* S. Hagar : Origin American Aborigines. Astronomy, read Dec. 27, 191 1, in 
symposium of Amer. Ass'n Adv. Sci., Amer. Anthrop. 

^Vol. 2, p. 259. Cf. James Wallace: A Description of the Isles of Orkney, 
PP- 33» 34. 



8 SMITHSOXIAX MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

Xansen's In Xorthern Mists, the X^orse-Irish accounts of the finding 
of Ari jNIarsson in his western home, and other reports of unlucky 
men who from time to time were storm-driven far across the 
Atlantic. If mariners or wanderers could thus casually make the 
passage from west to east, why not from east to west? The still 
rather common fate of being at the mercy of the elements and of an 
undesired landfall should not be regarded as suspicious, although of 
course often utilized in the fiction of all countries and periods. 
Horsford's ^ chart of the courses of wrecks and derelicts is a curious 
exhibit of their frequency in later years along a part of our coast. 
Would that frequency be less when both vessels and skippers were 
without compasses or charts, and in every way poorly equipped to 
elude or overcome their dangers ? D'Avezac ' relates, in passing, two 
rather early instances recorded of wrecks on the Canaries and the 
Azores — a French vessel of about the year 1336 and a Greek craft in 
1370. For that matter, disabled ships have been known to wander 
over the Atlantic month after month in recent years, reaching in 
succession widely separated regions; and, if left to themselves, 
might have stranded finally almost anywhere. 

The map of the Atlantic Ocean itself suggests that very early 
crossings were much more than possible ; exhibiting as it does a 
strait-like narrowing between South America and Africa, and an- 
other at the far north, where the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Green- 
land make convenient stepping stones. Moreover, warm, alluring 
islands are scattered out before Morocco and the Iberian peninsula 
so widely that the farthest is about halfway between Cadiz and Cape 
Race. Even from the tip of Brittany, the southwest of Ireland, or 
the Basque provinces of northw^estern Spain, that corner of New- 
foundland was not inordinately far. There were also favorable 
ocean currents at some points, the most notable of which swept then, 
as now, southward along the outer front of the Azores, Madeira, and 
the Canaries ; then in a wide curve moved westward to the Caribbean, 
joining there another stream from the lower African coast. The 
various natural crossing routes above indicated were the main 
highways of early accidents like those above mentioned, often merely 
legendary, but historical in the cases of Leif and Cabral. 



'Landfall of Leif, p. 4. 

■■'Discoveries of the Aliddle Ages. p. 32. Much more recently a small vessel, 
leaving one Canary Island for another, was blown off and afterward found 
with her crew well over toward South America. Also a fishing crew of the 
>Jewfoundland banks was similarly driven to the Azores. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK , 9 

Who can say how early these crossings of the ocean may have 
begun ? It is true, as Prof. Shaler ^ has suggested, that there might 
have been great difificulty in winning home again without a keel ; 
but ancient Egypt, Greece, and Phenicia all used this important appli- 
ance, according to Dr. Nansen ;° the Celts, Saxons, and Normans con- 
tinued its use, and Scandinavian shipbuilding, in this as in other 
things, inherited from antiquity and the Mediterranean. Besides, 
the Polynesians in their great sea-boats have made recorded ocean 
voyages more extensive than crossing the Atlantic, and there must 
have been many such in far earlier times, or islands as remote as 
Hawaii and Easter would not have been peopled by them. Why 
must we suppose that there were no navigators on the Atlantic side 
of America who were able to emulate the dusky adventurers of the 
Pacific ? 

W' e must remember that the Mediterranean civilization had an out- 
post at Cadiz from about iioo B. C, directly facing America; that, 
like all Phenician towns, it was probably even then a center of mari- 
time curiosity and enterprise, and, at any rate, had grown into a 
wealthy and far-reaching commercial city when visited five hundred 
years later ; and that in the middle of the twelfth century, after a long 
period of Mahometan rule just ended, it was still important enough 
to make Edrisi greatly exaggerate on his map the size of its peninsula, 
making this an island, and giving it a name when most other islands 
of the sea went nameless. 

We know that Phenicia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome were somehow 
aware, or dreamed, of lands beyond the great water ; and that these 
fascinating suggestions were useful long afterward in helping to 
inspire Prince Henry and Toscanelli, Columbus, and Cabot. It would 
be a pleasure to find their enduring charm rooted in real knowledge, 
as it well may have been ; but modern works on Atlantis — for the most 
part valueless — ^^add nothing trustworthy to Plato's memorable report 
of legendary echoes ; and we must feel that this story, and others 
like it, may have arisen from some vision, as unreal as the white 
surviving phantom city which a Central American padre saw from a 
mountain top so vividly that he made Stephens ^ believe in it also, 
with several picturesque romances by Haggard, Westall, and others 
for a much later result. Yet this is not the only and inevitable expla- 



* Nature and Man in America, p. 189. 
'■'Tn Northern Mists, vol. i, pp. i7, 40, 48, 242, 248. 

^Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, p. 195. Also J. L. Stephens : Travels 
in Yucatan, pp. 191 and 202. 



lO SMITHSONIAN- MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

nation, and there are divers corroborative items, of various degrees 
of cogency, to be considered, which go to make up a fair probability 
that some of these early, half historic glimmerings were something 
more than fancy-play or mere lucky conjectures of the truth. 

\\'e should naturally expect the Phenicians of Cadiz and Carthage 
to reach the ]^Iadeiras and the Azores, which lay out before them, and 
were rather more accessible than Britain. Storm's would drive them 
there if they lacked the hardihood to try the chances of the open sea, 
and one little island group would lead them on to another. In a 
cavern of St. ^lichael's,' of the middle Azores, an inscription is said 
to have been found by early explorers, which has been commonly 
supposed to be Phenician because identified as Hebrew, a closely 
allied script and tongue, by a " Moor, the son of a Jew," who was 
w^th the party, but could not, or at least did not translate it. The tale 
is from Thevet, cosmographer of Henry HI, who says that he 
visited these islands long afterward. Remembering divers American 
" Phenician inscriptions," called so before Norsemen were put for- 
ward as our chief inscribers, one desires at least a better expert 
opinion, and a more generally trusted transmitter than Thevet. 

The knowledge of these islands kept on through the centuries in an 
intermittent, glimmering way. The ancient Irish legends of explora- 
tion have much to say of islands to the southward which, in part, 
nmst be the Azores, if real, and in particular of islands notable for 
their fine sheep, their singing birds, or their dangerous monsters. 
Then the Moors, conquering Africa and the Iberian peninsula, soon 
came to the front as navigators, and we find again the Isle of Sheep, 
the Isle of Birds, and the Isle of the Dragon in Edrisi's Atlantic 
series, distinct from the Canaries which he had described already. 
Furthermore, his twelfth century map shows a string of islands 
stretching northward from below Gibraltar parallel to the western 
shore of Europe, sadly out of place for accurate geography, but in 
an arrangement fairly paralleled by the fifteenth century map of 
Zuan da Napoli, who gives us the names of Corvo and the other 
Azores. The chain of record seems reasonably complete, and early 
visits, even to that mid-Atlantic island and its companion, Conigi or 
Flores, must have been rather numerous. Who can believe that such 
visitors would all pause there with the vision in their souls of other 
islands equally probable, equally delightful out beyond ? 



Humboldt : Examen Critique, vol. 2, p. 240. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK II 

Edrisi ^ records also the celebrated Magrurin expedition from 
Lisbon, which is generally mentioned as occurring a little before the 
expulsion of the jMoors in 1147, though it must have been earlier, 
since in 1154 he mentions a street named after them, with no hint of 
recent naming. They had resolved, it appears, to cross the Atlantic, 
but turned southward after getting twelve days out, into the weed- 
encumbered Sargasso Sea, and seem to have wandered rather aim- 
lessly toward the African coast, along which, at last, they made their 
way home. 

Humboldt ' supposed that their farthest point may have been one 
of the Cape Verde group. Other inquirers think it more to the 
northward. The story gives the prince of that island an Arabic 
interpreter and makes him declare through this mouthpiece that his 
royal father had sailed forty days beyond it without finding land ; 
after which he promptly shipped his visitors to Africa. But we do 
not know Edrisi 's authority for what these wanderers related. Giving 
it full face value, however, there is nothing to indicate that they 
crossed the ocean. 

The same is equally true of the Genoese brothers ^ \'ivaldi who, 
according to old chronicles of their city, " undertook " about 1285, 
in the very spirit of Columbus " a new and untried voyage, that to 
India by way of the West." This has been taken to import a voyage 
around the Cape of Good Hope, and possibly may mean nothing 
more, yet the words are memorable. Besides, the fourteenth century 
maps, long antedating the Portuguese discoveries, give Italian names 
almost exclusively to the Azores, which would lie well out of the way 
of the course supposed. Either these adventurous men or others of 
their country must have ranged widely eastward and northeastward, 
with close quartering of the sea. One is tempted to think that they 
can not have been so very far from the Newfoundland banks or the 
Bermudas in some of their outward sweeps ; for they found and 
named all the more eastwardly islands that are known, as well as two 
or more dubious ones with Irish or Arabic names over which men still 
puzzle and wrangle. For the Irish were ever before the Arabs in their 
explorations — how far we cannot guess, the voyages of the Celts 
having begun far back beyond the twilight of history. Perhaps the 



'Edrisi: Geography, Jaubert's transl.. vol. 2, p. 2y. Their vojage is briefly 
related also in Examen Critique, vol. 2. 

" Examen Critique, vol. 2, p. 237. 

^ M. D'Avezac : Discoveries of the Middle Ages, p. 22,. Also Humboldt : 
Examen Critique, vol. 2, p. 234. 



12 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

first that we hear of which can possibly have any significance in this 
connection is Arthur's mysterious and disastrous foray into some 
northern GaeHc region, in quest of " The Spoils of Annwn." 

The ancient poem in the Book of Taliessin/ bearing that title, 
seems to have a nucleus of reality, though surrounding the British 
leader, as does the perhaps equally archaic story of Kilhwch and 
Olwen," with accessories borrowed from some fading pagan god. At 
any rate, these verses may have been the germ of the fictitious 
Arthurian conquest of Ireland and Iceland related by Geoffrey 
of Monmouth, that most romantic and romancing of literary bishops 
— who in this instance has found a believer to some extent in even the 
veteran investigator Rev. B. F. De Costa, for the latter says : " The 
expedition of Arthur to Iceland may be regarded as historic." " One 
may be pardoned for regarding this deliverance itself with some aston- 
ishment. As to the origin of these medieval extravagances in that 
poem, it is pleasant to find one's independent conjecture anticipated 
and confirmed by a suggestion of Sir John Rhys ^ published long ago. 

There is a most interesting sequence of Irish sea-tales better worthy 
of our consideration. First, the \'oyage of Bran, even as a composi- 
tion, apparently dates well back into early heathen times. Dr. 
Zimmer " credits parts of it to the seventh century, but they include 
a quite irrelevant prophecy, made by a sea-god in person, which 
utterance, though itself archaic in subject matter, is evidently an addi- 
tion to an original simple story. This nucleus may well be very 
ancient indeed. 

Bran the son of Febal, we are told, having been summoned by 
a mysterious and lovely feminine being, sailed over the ocean to the 
Isle of Joy, where everyone laughed wnthout ceasing. One of Bran's 
men went ashore, and forthwith took to laughing also. His comrades 
could get no answer from him, so sailed on and let him be. At the 
next island a lovely enchantress threw a ball of magic yarn to Bran ; 
which hit the mark and held, so that she drew him and all of them 
ashore. She kept them with her and her fair companions for a 
year as it seemed, but really it was many years. At last one of the 
crew was taken with a great longing for home ; so Bran carried 
him back to Ireland. But when the man stepped ashore, he fell to 



' W. F. Skene: The Four Ancient Books of Wales, vol. i. p. 264. 

''J. Rhys: Introduction to Malory's King Arthur, p. 224. 

^B. F. DeCosta : Arctic Exploration. Amer. Geogr. Soc. Bull. 1880, p. 163. 

*J. Rhys: The Arthurian Legend, (1890, pp. 10, 11. 

^Alfred Nutt ; The \oyage of Bran. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK I3 

ashes, as though very long dead. Bran took warning and would not 
land. He lay off shore and told the people his story ; then put out 
to sea and was never heard of again. 

What fact, if any, is behind this delightful old pagan allegory? 
Of course it may possibly embody a memory of summer isles of Eden 
really visited ; or it may be no more than the play of sea-side fancy 
among sunset clouds, or an echo of wonder-tales older than the 
Odyssey. The legend, as a whole and in detail, has been exhaustively 
considered in a valuable work by Mr. Nutt,' but we can get no 
nearer than this to the origin of its germ. 

The \'oyage of Maelduin ' inherits from the Voyage of Bran and 
borrows from many quarters, even one of St. Brandan's shipmates 
being among its later acquisitions. Every successive editor and en- 
larger of the story seems to have felt bound to outdo his predecessors. 
Its wonders are manifold : ants as large as colts ; a supernatural cat 
and its palace ; a horse-monster with blue claws ; a holy anchoret clad 
only in his white miraculous hair ; a wicked monastery cook marooned 
in a little private hell on a barren rock for having played the thief and 
served uneatable food to his brethren. All told, this \'oyage of 
Maelduin is hardly convincing, except as to the possibilities of 
Irish fancy unrestrained ; which compares ill with the dramatic grip, 
epic power, and graphic quality of Icelandic narration. However, 
it passes along the tradition of lovely tropical islands in distant seas. 

St. Brandan the Navigator was real, the abbot of a Kerry mon- 
astery near the end of the sixth century. His experiences are sung 
in twelfth century Latin verse and told in early Gaelic prose, as 
well as in the fine English translation printed by Wynken de Worde, 
successor to Caxton — not contemporary testimony, to be sure, but 
probably reliable as to the main fact and general course of his 
Atlantic journeying, with more or less of the details. 

Humboldt thought St. Brandan may have gone northward, visiting 
the Orkneys ; but he seems to be wrong, for the narrative has a 
southern cast. A writer in the Celtic Review,' Mr. Dominick Daly, 
at first argued for the Bahamas — making the saint forestall Columbus 
— with an ingenious marshaling of winds and current, and other 
data not all quite so tenable. But he seems to have been converted to 
Tenerift'e and her island sisterhood bv Markham's translation of 



'Alfred Nutt : Tlie Voyage of Bran. 
'•'Joyce: The Voyage of Maelduin. 
^The Celtic Review, \ol. i, p. 139. 



14 SMITHSOXIAX MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

Espinosa/ He must be right in the change. Yet Mr. De Roc's ° very 
bulky vohune takes St. Brandan across in a higher latitude ; and 
Mr. Cantwell ' plants him near Cairo, Illinois, with Ernulphus and 
Madoc to follow. 

Saint Brandan (or Brenden or Borondon) was summoned, like 
Bran ; but only by an abbot, poor fellow, and for a search in south- 
western waters after one Mernoc, also very holy and quite vanished. 
Another object of his quest was the real original garden of Adam and 
Eve, a rather difficult order. According to some accounts the Breton 
St. Malo went with him, the lost ]\lernoc being a Breton too. After- 
ward St. ]\Ialo had a voyage of his own, at least in literature, along 
similar lines. 

The ship of Brandan, like that of Maelduin, was hide-covered 
over a wooden framework, the hide being in three layers, one inside, 
two outside : and there were other coincidences as to the embarka- 
tion and the number of sailor-monks. Furthermore, two of the crew 
were foredoomed in each case. But propriety was now strictly 
observed. Xo magic yarn-balls caught the saint ; he was not fished 
for by any kind of Circe or Calypso. The reasons are not given. 
Only once a faint semblance of peril may seem to threaten, in his 
visit to an island monastery of some easy order, where angels lighted 
the tapers and served meals for the brethren, exciting only a 
reverent astonishment in the pious guest. \'ery humanely and 
winningly, though, he warns off the tormenting swarms of devils 
from hapless Judas, bidding them let the poor creature have that one 
night in peace. And about the loveliest fantasy in literature is that 
of the divinely singing birds, who were really unlucky angels, doomed 
only to serve God in this delightful way, " because our sins had been 
but little. Then all the birds began to sing evensong, so that it was 
an heavenly noise to hear." 

The legend was a liberal dealer in matters of myth, borrowing 
and lending. Under one of these heads and as proof of Irish-Arab 
interchanges already alluded to. either direct or through others, we 
must rank the island-monster, which punished the building of a fire on 
it in mistake, and the roc-like bird that began life again after the 
manner of the phoenix. Only, this was by immersion in a Pool of 
Youth, which passed on to later times, prompting, it may be (with 



'The Celtic Review, 1909. p. 2"/},. 
''P. De Roo: History of America before Columbus. 

'E. Cantwell: Pre-Columbian Discoveries of America. Mag. West. History, 
vol. 13. p. 141. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK I5 

native aid). Ponce de Leon's pathetic effort to turn a dream into 
reality. 

Among- vagrant fancies, the X'oyage of St. Brandan preserves a 
few significant facts. The island where were " the whitest and 
greatest sheep they ever saw," pasturing on luxuriant herbage never 
touched by frost, recalls the northern side of Tenerifiie and its fleece- 
robed inhabitants, who lived mainly by their flocks, as depicted on 
the spot by Espinosa, whose work was first printed in Spain in 1 597. 
A visit to a neighboring region, seeming;ly continental, is also related, 
whence the explorers carried away " fruit and gems." Now Africa, 
having both, is not very far away. Even more apt and explicit are the 
accounts of volcanic phenomenon ; for example : " They saw a hill 
all one fire and the fire stood on each side of the hill like a wall, all 
burning." Such a picture might have been photographed within 
four or five years among the Canary Islands, and has many times 
been repeated during the march of centuries. 

No doubt there are many islands having volcanoes, but not among 
the Bahamas. One might find some difficulty in discovering sheep, 
cliffs, active volcanoes, fruit, tropical weather, good pasturage, 
and an earthly paradise, all nearly together ; but at any rate it must be 
conceded that no part of the world within reach of the saint, except 
the " Fortunate Isles " or their neighbors could probably supply the 
combination. 

Espinosa relates traditions of the few surviving Guanches, concern- 
ing an early evangelist supposed to be an apostle (as in so many other 
instances) ; thirty people who landed long ago at Icod, " the gathering 
place of the sons of the great one." and the finding, before the Span- 
iards came, of a miraculous image, inscribed with uninterpreted 
assemblages of Latin letters ; also a curious cjuotation from an uniden- 
tified calendar, which relates the sojourn in those islands of St. Bran- 
dan and St. Malo for seven years. The latter, it tells us, performed an 
ecclesiastical experiment in resuscitating the dead and damned, there- 
by learning uncomfortable things about " Hell " — and permitted his 
patient to die again (and finally) " in the time of the Emperor 
Justinian." The statuette (of the ^ladonna and child) above referred 
to, or a later substitute as some say. is still borne in religious pro- 
cessions about the island of Tenerifife ; and withholds obstinately the 
message of its cryptic characters. Until these cipher writings shall 
have been read to some purpose, they obviously can not help to es- 
tablish anv connection with St. Brandan. Mr. Dalv thinks the saint 



1 6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

and his companions may have brought the holy image from Ireland ; 
but in view of the great gap of time to be accounted for, I incline 
rather to the entertaining Father Espinosa's artless declaration that 
angels brought it straight from Heaven. 

In all this there is not much to be fairly called corroboration of 
the internal evidence of the medieval voyage-narrative ; but it is 
certainly interesting to find the sixteenth century Spaniards of the 
Canaries well up in the legends of St. Brandan and St. Malo. and 
confident of their visit to those islands a thousand years earlier. 

3.— THE MYTHICAL ISLANDS OF THE ATLANTIC 
The only place where one can still see St. Brandan is on Pizigani's 
map' of 1367, bestowing his benediction, in medieval portraiture, 
on his " Fortunate Islands," thus named collectively in the map-le- 
gend, but individually as Ysola Caporizzia, Ysola Canaria, and Ysole 
douer Sommart. Possibly they were borrowed from Dulcert 1339 
of Genoa, who calls the first-named island Capraria and the last 
Primaria." The site of the latter is identical in both maps and approx- 
imately occupied by a cluster of rocks in a more modern one. Som- 
mart (somma) is, however, more likely to indicate the peak of Pico; 
and the plural form Ysole may convey a sense of its less lofty Azorian 
companions. Whatever the explanation of this item, the cartographer 
of the Atlante INIediceo or Gaddiano map (1351) thought best to 
omit it ; as does also the Catalan map of 1375. They substituted, how- 
ever, for Caporizzia, Legname or d'Legname (Markland, forest-land) 
because of the great woods " de haute futaie " (D'Avezac) "* with 
which the early visitors found it covered, also the companion island 
becomes Porto Santo, as now, and Las Desertas have already taken 
their name as Insulse Desertse. Zuan da Napoli, whose map — that is, 
the Venetian one uncertainly attributed to him — is given by Kohl 
approximately the date 14 — ■ (perhaps of 1440 or later) translates 
Legname into Aladera, its Portuguese equivalent, which, with a 
little change in spelling, still remains. It seems pretty clear that 
Madeira is the original ATarkland of Atlantic voyagers ; also that 
it and its neighbor, Porto Santo, with or without some lesser com- 



' Kohl's collection of maps in Library of Congress. Also Jomard's Atlas. 

^ Nordenskjold's Periplus, pi. 8, also K. Kretschmer: The Discovery of 
America (Die Entdeckung Amerikas), Atlas, Tafel i, pi. 2. Benincasa 1482 
and others also show the Madeira group as three islands ; hut consider Las 
Desertas one of them, omitting Primaria or Sommart. 

^ Marie D'Avezac : Discoveries of the Middle Ages. pp. 7, 8. The best repro- 
duction is in Fischer's Sammlung. There is also a good one in Benzley's The 
Dawn of Modern Geography and an incomplete facsimile in Nordenskjold's 
Periplus. * 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS 



VOL. 59, NO. 19, PL. 1 




PART OF MAP OF THE PIZIGANI BROTHERS, 1 67 (FROM JOMARD), ATLANTIC ISLANDS, UPPER PART 
Showing Brazil west of south of Ireland; also Brazir (Man) with ship, dragon, and kraken 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS 



VOL. 69, NO. 19, PL. 2 




PART OF MAP OF THE PIZIGANI BROTHERS 1367 (FROM JOMARD", ATLANTIC ISLANDS, LOWER PART 

Showing angel warning against westward travel ; also St. Brandan kneeling by his islands 

(This plate partly Overlaps plate 1 ) 



MAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIC 



VOL. 59, NO. 19, PL. 3 




PART OF CATALAN MAP OF 1375 

Showing the Island of Brazil west of the south of Ireland. Man and Corvo (with Flores as li Conigi) 

successively below. Brazil is annular, enclosing water and islets 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS 



VOL, 59, NO, 19, PL. 4 










PART OF MAP OF BATTISTA BECCARIA (BECHARIUS) 1435, UPPER PART OF THE ATLANTIC ISLANDS 
Showing Brazil, Man, Corvo, and Flores 



NO. 19 XORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA DABCOCK I7 

panions. were generally accepted by the' conjecture or tradition of the 
fourteenth century as The Fortunate Islands and especially The 
Fortunate Isles of St. Brandan. This identification was a-fterwards 
forgotten, but the memory lingered that at least one island had borne 
his name, and w'e find it reappearing, in random fashion, here and 
there about the ocean at points where no island should be — a very 
elusive " He fantastique," though not the only one nor the most sig- 
nificant ; for " the mythical islands " are sown most liberally over the 
maps of five centuries. Thus Brazil, on a French map of 1754 holds 
nearly the same direction from Limerick as Dalorto gave it about 430 
vears before. Mayda (Asmayda) is even more persistent, for I find 
it in the old and proper latitude, opposite northern France, on a relief 
map, copyrighted in the United States in 1906. 

As map-makers have generally followed explorers, with only a 
little toning down and conjectural improvement, w-e may safely 
take every additional island of the map as representing at least 
one voyage or the report of one. We know how the very dubious 
disclosures of the Zeni and the indubitable discoveries of the fifteenth 
century got into geography, though the former have since melted 
away. Also we can see how the medieval cartographers built up, 
item by item, a true island-showing for the eastern side of the Atlantic, 
so that even the 135 1 map already cited.' has not only all the Canaries, 
but all their names, as now in vise, with the single exception of 
Tenerifife. The islands w^hich have not held their place in maps of the 
best authority are almost all islands out of place and duplicated, 
like the Island of St. Brandan, or bits of some more extended and 
more distant coast line similarly misunderstood. Thus the Sunken 
Land of Bus, named after one of Frobisher's ships ' and long a dis- 
quiet to the mariner, since it could never be found again, is now 
generally recognized as a part of Greenland, wdiich appeared un- 
expectedly before him when he was somehow off his reckoning. 
Several other and better known " mythical islands " are inadequately 
accounted for by any theory which does not cross the Atlantic. 

In form and direction Antillia and Brazil are quite as constant as 
the Canaries, and more so than the Azores, of the early maps ; which 
may show conviction arising from some previous precise narrative. 
Antillia, at its first appearance, is a large, elongated, rectangular, 
quadrilateral island with four indentations in its eastern side, three in 
its western side, each in two or three lobes, also a greater one at its 
southern end, all carefully delineated as if by survey ; and it so re- 
mains, on nearly all the pre-Columbian maps. Sometimes this form 



*M. D'Avezac : Discoveries of the Middle Ages, p. 42. 
"Or possibly after one of his ofificers. 



l8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

and the name also have been explained by the Atlantis legend, since 
Plato's description corresponds with it more or less. But there is no 
obvious reason why this influence should have been less potent in the 
fourteenth century, the quite numerous maps of which have no draw- 
ings of Antillia.' Humboldt argued against both suppositions and 
thought the name derivable from the Arabic " Al Tin,"' the serpent 
or dragon, a reminiscence of the terrors of the Sea of Darkness. In 
support of his contention he refers to the Island of the Dragon and 
like items. It is certainly true that Edrisi has a passage concerning 
that destroyer, killed, as he says, on one of the Azores by Alexander 
the Great ; that the Pizigani's kidnapping monster is distinctly labeled 
" a dragon "" and that even the much later Olaus Magnus ^ decorates 
one issue of his history with a pictured saurian having a serpent's 
tail, in the act of dragging a sailor from a ship's deck to its lair on 
some rocky Atlantic shore. Evidently huge reptiles of the lizard 
kind were associated in human minds for five or six centuries with 
the perils of westward navigation. This of course may mean no more 
than a play of fancy about memories of crocodile-haunted African 
rivers ; though it may also conceivably record impressions left by far 
w^estern islands where similar forms were at least equally common. 
D'Avezac,^ reviewing the matter of etymology in 1845, dissented from 
Humboldt's hypothesis ; which does not seem to have been taken up 
zealously by any advocate, notwithstanding the very great eminence 
of its author. Perhaps it has been regarded as ingenious, rather than 
perfectly reliable, for the transformation of Altin into Antillia is not 
adequately explained. 

A more plausible conjecture, probably the most nearly convincing 
one thus far offered, makes up the name in Portuguese from Ante or 
Anti (before or opposite) and ilha Island. On some maps the latter 
word regularly becomes ilia — for example that attributed to Zuan 
da Napoli,* already mentioned. By either spelling, the pronunciation 
in full would presumably be Anteillia or Antiilia, readily compressed 
to Antillia, after the manner of all languages when two similar vowels 
come together. Obviously this derivation has the advantage of sim- 
plicity and the case as to meaning is equally good. Divers early maps 
— as Battista Beccaria (Becharius) 1435, Bianco 1436, Pareto ° 1455- 
Roselli 1468, Bertran 1489, and Benincasa, 1482 — show Antillia, 



'Jomard: Atlas, Plate 11', Pizigani Map of 1367. An obscure Latin inscrip- 
tion on it contains, however, the word Atullae or Atillie, identified with 
Antillia by Kretschmer and others. 

-J. Winsor : Narr. and Crit. Hist, of America, vol. I, p. 74; Tillinghast's 
Monograph. 

•'Les lies Fantastiques. p. 2"]. 

* Kohl's collection of maps in Library of Congress. 

^K. Kretschmer: Die Entdeckung Amerikas, Atlas. Tafel 4. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK I9 

thus named, out before the Azores and opposite Portugal across a 
great expanse of sea and curiously duplicating that kingdom in length, 
breadth, minor details, and rectangular outline. Benincasa adds to 
the appearance of accuracy by inscribing at intervals names, perhaps 
of provinces, on all parts of this large island, but seemingly with special 
reference to the bays and their neighborhoods, as well as on another 
of similar general form, though shorter and narrower, which lies to 
the northward somewhat farther than Florida from Cuba. Bianco 
had called this rather fearsomely La Man de Satanaxio, commonly 
rendered The Island of the Hand of Satan, a name abbreviated to 
Satanta by one much later geographer and even changed to St. Anna 
by another, both necessarily of but secondary authoritv in such a 
matter. Benincasa, however, reverts to the earlier name Salvagio or 
Saluagio of Beccaria, changing it slightly to Saluaga. Presumably 
in both cases the " u " should have the value of " v," as was common 
usage then and long afterward. 

This Beccaria' (Becharius), was the first delineator, so far as we 
know, of this highly significant Antillian group of large far south- 
western islands. He makes them four in number, including a rela- 
tively small, but considerable island, north of Salvagio marked I in 
Mar-Sea Island (or Islands), literally " in sea '" — and Reylla (King 
Island or Royal Island), bearing, in area, form, and position, approxi- 
mately the same relation to Antillia that Jamaica bears to Cuba.' He 
also applies to the whole group the conspicuous legend Newly Re- 
ported Islands — Insulle a Novo Repte., which recalls the note accom- 
panying Antillia on Behaim's globe of 1492, prepared while Columbus 
was yet at sea on his first voyage, to the effect that a Spanish vessel 
visited this island in 1414. Nordenskjold quotes also an anonymous 
map of 1424 at Weimar, which Santorem has copied in his atlas, but 
without Antillia by reason of incomplete westward extension ; but the 
present Weimar librarian considers this to be certainly the work 
(perhaps about 1481), of Freducci, a map-maker of the latter half of 
that century.'' Another map by Freducci made after the earlier 



' Studi Bibliografici e Biografici, containing papers of ist and 2d Italian 
Geographical Congresses, with maps appended, plate 8. 

- Roselli 1468 shows all four islands, though the outline of his Roills is 
faint. The original map is in the collection of the Hispania Society of 
America, New York. Bertran, as reported l)y Kretschmer. gives it a different 
name. 

^My photographic copy of the original, made in Weimar, shows the upper 
half of Antillia with the name in full, the lower half of the island being cut 
off by the parchment border. Salvagio above it is in full outline of usual 
form, but with only S legible. 



20 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

voyages of Columbus is considered by him to show Antillia as of the 
real Antilles. The slightly later (1500) map of Juan de La Cosa may 
preserve another echo of the tradition recorded by Behaim in his 
entry " this is the island that the Portuguese found '" applied to an un- 
named outline of the orthodox rectangular form of the eastern South 
American coast, for he could hardly yet have heard of the landfall of 
Cabral. Finally, we know that Las Casas, the friend of Columbus, 
promptly applied to Cuba and its companions the term The Antilles, 
which they bear to this day and that other contemporaries believed he 
had reached the Antillia which Toscanelli recommended to him in 
advance as a convenient stopping-place on the way to Asia. All 
things considered, it appears that Nordenskjold had some solid 
ground of justification for classifying all the maps of Periplus which 
contain Antillia, under the heading " Maps relating to the New 
World " (see note I, p. 176). 

Antillia and its consorts cannot be the Azores, which in each 
instance are shown half way out to them or not much less, the 
remotest pair of the latter, Flores and Corvo being similarly situated 
in reality with regard to some points of the American shore. Fur- 
thermore these Portuguese islands are in each instance represented of 
about the proper size, being indeed evidently well understood except 
as to the western inclination of the extended Azorean series. This is 
not strange in view of the amount of coming and going among them 
at that time, Beccaria's earliest date being about sixty years after ' the 
establishment of the Norman trading post Petit Dieppe on the African 
coast far below, followed by frequent voyages thereto while the 
Basque and Breton fisheries were carried on in a lively way in those 
seas. The Italians also had been up among them, leaving names for all 
the islands, and now the Portuguese were taking exploration and 
colonization earnestly in hand. But far beyond these Azores there 
was obviously, in their settled belief, something very much greater, 
aptly defined as in front of Portugal, and the Azores, since it extended 
from the parallel of Lisbon or higher, to about that of Gibraltar or a 
little below. The Antillia of Beccaria and his successors may well be 
rather too far north. Discoverers, knowing nothing of the dip of the 
isothermal lines southward on the western side, would be likely to 
judge by climate and productions, thus erring in the latitude; and it 
is easy to see how an opposite mass of land reported to resemble 
Portugal in bulk, and conditions, might be conventionalized by the 
map-makers into greater resemblance. A royal grant of i486 even 



'Nordenskjold: Periplus, p. 115. Cf. M. D'Avezac : Discoveries of the 
Middle Ages. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 21 

refers to Antillia as possibly part of another continent.' The facts 
above presented seem to me to point to the region of the Greater 
Antilles, as we very appropriately call them now, perhaps with a part 
of the neighboring mainland and lesser islands outlying at sea, but 
there is no need to work out this suggestion more particularly. The 
names of the chief upper island have puzzled geographers, but if 
savages were there and acted after their kind we need find no great 
difificulty in accounting for Salvagio or The Hand of Satan ; and all 
later forms apparently grew out of these. 

Nansen's In Northern Mists condenses from Diodorusatalealready 
mentioned, of a Phenician ship driven by tempests to a region opposite 
Africa, which had both mountains and lowland tracts, and abounded 
in the lavish gifts of nature. This description would fit the West 
Indian region above mentioned, though hardly anything above it on 
the American side. However, it may equally well have been developed 
out of the reported facts of a traditional accidental visit to ^[adeira. 
Xordenskjold will not say as much for E'razil (the original one) 
as for Antillia, yet it has a case that cannot be ignored. The former 
island of the map rarely, if ever, wanders into southern waters, 
and is nearly always west or south of west of Limerick in tlie early 
maps, at an apparent distance which is absurdly small. But the four- 
teenth and fifteenth century cartographers had a cautious habit of 
minimizing distances, the perfectly well known Corvo, for example, 
being- generally shown (with that name as Corvi ^larini, Corvis 
Marinis. or Corvo Marinis), very much nearer Spain than it should 
be. The Piziganis ( 1367) show both, also Brazil in the usual form 
and place besides the more southerly " Ysole Brazir " apparently ?ilan, 
to judge by its crescent form and location, though farther out than 
usual and doubly puzzling by the approximate repetition of the upper 
name and the use of the Italian ])lural where but one island is shown. 
This part of the map shows a dentapod kraken dragging a seaman 
from a ship, a dragon heart and an angel warning navigators back ; 
with a frantic though obscure inscription denouncing the dangers of 
sailing westward. 

The original circular Brazil, west of southern Ireland, is said some- 
times to have been called " great," by the medieval Irish.' reminding 
us of " Great Ireland," which was in the same quarter or near it ; and 
it was believed to be of such promise and importance that numerous 
expeditions were sent forth in search of it by the merchants of Bristol 
during the period between Botoner's failure in 1480 and Cabot's 



' E. J. Payne : The A^e of Discovery. Cambridge A'lodern History, vol. i p. 20. 
-See note 2, p. 176. 



22 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

success in 1497. His small ship ^^latthew won through the storm- 
belt to the region about the Gulf of St. Lawrence; and he evidently 
felt that this was Brazil, for he uttered hopeful forecasts of finding 
silk and brazil-wood. Since it was midsummer, the extravagance of 
this would be hidden ; besides, his ideas were no doubt colored by 
acquaintance with lovely, dye-yielding, forest-clad, fortunate islands 
of the eastern Atlantic, and his words were perhaps meant chiefly 
for more southward points than his first landfall, since he may have 
voyaged a considerable distance that way. 

There are certain features of this Brazil most naturally explained 
as imperfect delineations of that out jutting elbow of North America 
which includes the Gulf of St. Lawrence, although no one seems to 
have noticed what they indicate. Thus the Catalan atlas of 1375 
shows Brazil not as a solid land, but as enclosing a sheet of water in 
which several isles appear. Xordenskjold ' says they are seven in 
number, and reads them as derived from the legend of the Island of 
the Seven Cities, giving no authority except his own fancy. But this 
Brazil is too far north for the Spanish story, which most likely had 
to do with one of the Azores or ^Madeira, being perhaps an exaggera- 
tion of some real migration of escape, such as would be nearly certain 
to occur at the height of the Moorish conquest. Besides, seven towns 
do not require an equal number of islands in a great lake or an inland 
sea. The Spaniards themselves felt no incongruity in hunting for 
those cities, in 1539-40, among the deserts and mesas of New Mexico. 

Again, several maps, for instance Prunes's " 1553 and INIercator's 
1595, show Brazil as divided into two islands by a passage or channel. 
For this also we have a mythological explanation ( by Dr. Nansen ') — 
namely the " river of death." But again the conjecture is quite 
unsupported. Yet again, in several maps, Brazil has a space marked 
on it after a quaint early fashion of indicating mountainous regions 
and other natural features, and this bears the inscription Montorius 
or Mont orious, apparently meaning at least, that a portion of Brazil 
was mountainous. But the map of Dalorto 1325 or 1330 gives its 
name in full as Insula de montonis sine de brazile.' ( See note 3. p. 
176.) 

If. now. we apply these several distinctive features to the region 
reached by Cabot, we find this out jutting corner of America sur- 
rounding the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which contains Prince Edward's 
Island and the ]\Iagdalen Islands, Brion Island and others. Its east- 



' Periplus. p. 164. 

^K. Kretschmer: The Discovery of America, Atlas, Tafel 4, map 5. 

Mn Northern Alists, vol. 2, p. 228. 

* Ibid. 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS 



VOL. 59, NO. 19, PL. 5 






a. 



o 









W5 



CO 









:^ 

iHenieOTTiC 






0.-,i 



^-r'" 61 -Ch/ 






c , 5?^ '^^^f 



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53 



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4S-0 



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No. 5. Karte des Matheus Prunes. 1553. (Biblioteca Comunale zu Siena.) 



PART OF MAP OF MATHEUS PRUNES. 1553 

From Kretschmer's Atlas of Die Entdeckung Amerikas 

Showing Brazil divided by channel 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 23 

ward wall is divided by the Strait of Cabot ; and the great estuary of 
the St. Lawrence, dividing the opposite side, might well be thought a 
continuation of that channel and to lead out again to the sea. Just 
this was in fact supposed down to Cartier's voyages or later. We are 
now aware that only the front of this elbow of the continent is insular 
(Newfoundland and Cape Breton), but it was inevitable that in all 
the centuries before the seventeenth the whole tract, if known at all, 
should be regarded as an island. The circular external outline may 
have been some mariner's guess from the curvature of Xewfoundalnd 
and Nova Scotia considered together, and the scollops, serrations, or 
indentations of this outline presented by many maps may indicate a 
memory of real bays and inlets, though fancy would be ample for sup- 
plying them. As to the mountains, there are considerable elevations 
along these ocean-fronting regions, and they grow distinctly impres- 
sive beyond the Bay of Fundy, still within the land-wall of the St. 
Lawrence Gulf. 

We have, then, in a real region, and in only one, the several 
peculiar features above stated, each oiTered also by a group of old maps 
— as though every observer had individually contributed what most 
particularly impressed each of them, and was most vividly remem- 
bered: and there is nothing in geography or in the circumstances of 
those times to make predecessors of Cabot, crossing- as he crossed, 
impossible or very improbable. Indeed, that particular part of Amer- 
ica always held itself out conspicuously, tempting discovery. The 
coincidences may be nothing more ; but the speculation has probably 
a sounder basis than any other advanced thus far concerning this 
very suggestive " island." 

Some investigators, considering Brazil a reality of the past, have 
explained it in another way, making it a lesser Atlantis of more 
gradual submergence, a veritable " sunken land," which went slowly 
down, leaving no more to show for it now than the lonely, bare, 
granite peak of Rockall, best described by Air. Miller Christie in 
The Scottish Geographical Magazine for 1898. He does not, how- 
ever, suggest its identity with Brazil. According to a globe which 
he has found, there seems to have been a sand-bank visible (at least 
sometimes ) on the spot three or four centuries ago ;but nothing could 
have been there in the historical period to warrant belief in the great 
Brazil ; its crags must have been frequently in sight of those who 
sought the latter ; and the situation must always have been too incle- 
ment. Porcupine Bank has also been presented in this connection, 
but with even less plausibility, being too near the Irish coast, too 
ancient in its visibility, too much out of the right direction from 



24 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

Limerick, and also apparently indicated on at least one map which 
distinctly shows Brazil also, farther afield. 

The name. Brazil, has been the subject of much discussion and 
has led many on a quite misleading trail. For a generation or so 
after the first appearance in cartography of the original Brazil off 
Ireland, so far as known, the maps begin to show a second or emula- 
tive Brazil off Portugal, and with much the same relation to Lisbon 
as the other had to Limerick. Its name varies, as might be expected, 
from Brazi and Bracir to Buxelle, for the word was a foreign 
importation. Probably this island ^ was Terceira of the Azores, 
where dye-woods abounded and which seems to be the Bracir oppo- 
site Spain of the 1367 Pizigani map, a mountain there still bearing the 
name Brazil. A second island in that group was named the same 
perhaps for like reason, any kind of red dye-wood being known as 
Brazil-wood ; and there were other instances of such naming, the 
latest holding its ground sturdily even yet in eastern South America. 
It is evident that from the middle of the fourteenth to the beginning 
of the sixteenth century, any region named Brazil would be expected 
to yield Brazil-wood or other vegetable dye. such as orchilla, in justifi- 
cation of its name. So it is not surprising that we should be bidden to 
seek the derivation of the first Brazil in just such material for dyeing. 

But here the clue fails ; for the origin of the word itself is 
still to seek. The only tenable explanation thus far given makes 
Brazil a coalescence of two long obsolete Irish Gaelic words, breas 
(Prince) and ail (noble — besides other meanings), Breas also having 
been in ancient use as the proper name of many chiefs and eminent 
men. The Irish local name usually prefixes I, or Hy, meaning 
" country." and more particularly " island." from Inis, the Gaelic 
equivalent of Insula. Isola, Ysola, or Ilha. It might not be safe to 
translate I. de Brazil as the Island of the Noble Prince or the Xoble 
and Princely Island ; but the general intention of extolling its merits 
is undeniable, and, on the fifteenth century map of Fra Mauro we 
even find a Latin legend declaring it to be Berzil the fortunate island 
of the Irish. In all this there is certainly something more than admira- 
tion of a salable commodity which might be gathered by the shipload 
and used for dveing. Furthermore, nobody would have thought, in 
the beginning, of expecting such dye-woods or equivalent material 
approximately in the latitude of Ireland. After centuries of associa- 
tion between the name and the article, the case was very different 
(see note 4, p. 176). 



M. D'Avezac : Discoveries of the Middle Ages, p. 35. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 25 

The true history of the matter seems to have been as follows : 
The original Brazil, west of Ireland, was found some time (probably 
very long) before 1325 and named admiringly. Afterward, in emula- 
tion, the same name of high praise and celebration was applied to 
the beautiful island of Terceira, where a mountain bears it still. The 
abundant dye-material ' of the latter came to be known by this geo- 
graphical name (as india rubber is, wherever obtained) ; other islands 
which had the like were called Brazil, and at last it was hardly 
possible to think of that name without thinking of the dye. This 
came about early and effectually among- the South-European geo- 
graphers, who had borrowed an Irish word without knowing the 
Irish language. We find Brazir and Brazile as their pretty fair 
guesses at the true name of the original island, besides the more 
aberrant forms already mentioned, which were generally applied to 
the later and derivative Brazils nearer their own shores. Thus 
Brazil-wood has nothing to do with the original naming ; but the 
island name has everything to do, through another and namesake 
island, with the naming of the widely sought and greatly coveted dye. 

From the middle of the fourteenth century, Brazil had usually a 
crescent-shaped consort on the maps called Man, Mon, or Mam, 
located farther to the southwest and about in the latitude of Brittany. 
This has been sometimes identified with that similarly located and 
most persistent Asmaida, Mayda or Mayde which Humboldt thought 
to be of Arabic naming and diabolical significance ; and certainly hav- 
ing names in two languages need be no more surprising in this in- 
stance than in that of Madeira, or Teneriffe, or Flores. Indeed, Man 
with its distinctive form, appears in one old map as Joncele ; and 
Mayda in a later one as Vlandoren, showing that navigators of still 
other tongues had taken their turns in reporting. It must further be 
said for Mayda that even in a mid-eighteenth century map it retains 
the old station of Man southwest of Brazil ; but, on the other hand, it 
is not usually of a distinctly crescent form. 

Sometimes, too, Man has been identified with the island north of 
Antillia, the full name of which is understood to be La ^lan de 
Satanaxio ; but this is most likely a case of mere verbal coincidence, 
helped out by their share in a common evil repute, to which the 
Devil Rock, still appearing on some maps in this quarter. ma\' bear 
witness. But the existence of this rock is apparently disproven, 
as the United States Hydrographic Office informs me. At any 
rate, on the fifteenth century maps of Beccaria, Benincasa, and Bianco, 



'See Note 5, p. 176. 



26 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

both islands are shown, although of very unlike aspect and in widely 
separated regions of the sea. It is altogether more likely that the 
name Man is Gaelic in this instance, as in that of the well known island 
in the Irish Sea, especially as its nearest and most constant neighbor 
Brazil is Gaelic too ; but the " Man " of Bianco's long name is doubt- 
less correctly rendered as Latin in origin. This would not, however, 
prove a different original meaning, for " Man" is said to mean 
" Hand " in obsolete Gaelic also. 

If all this curious shoal of names and islands having to do with Man 
in name or in form and location must indeed be considered as one 
then assuredly is that one the most protean, elusive, and bewilder- 
ing of the whole " mythical island " display. It seems more readily 
conceivable to suppose they have grown out of two or more glimpses 
of land, at widely separated points and by men of different nations 
and languages who sometimes used a syllable in common, though with 
different meanings ; and there is nothing in this to preclude those 
shores from belonging to a single far extended line, continuous or 
broken. A guess at Satanaxio has already been given. Similarly we 
may say that if Brazil be the region about the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 
we might possibly find I\Ian in the Bermudas, though the indications 
are too faint to warrant more than a diffident suggestion (see note 6, 

P- 177)- 

Reviewing the general field of these islands that for so long have 
played their little jests with geography, it seems altogether likely 
that, before the acknowledged historical discoveries of the Antilles 
and North America, there had been crossings and recrossings of the 
Atlantic at various times approximately along the routes of Columbus 
and Cabot ; possibly also on one or more intervening lines. The 
vague intimations which they gave in the figures and traditions of 
Antillia and Brazil undoubtedly spurred on both of these men ; and 
probably one or more of them had, far earlier, through the related 
Great Ireland and its legends, made certain the discovery of Mark- 
land and Wineland by the Icelanders. But we have no surviving 
narratives of these previous voyages which may be tested by their data 
of natural history, ethnology, and coastline features as we test the 
voyage-narrative of Thorfinn Karlsefni. 

4.— THE PROBLEM OF GREAT IRELAND 

We acquit St. Brandan of finding America, but the fact remains 
that for probably more than five centuries men believed in a Great 
Ireland far west of Ireland over sea. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 27 

Two native boys, captured in Markland. an American region, 
according to the Saga of Eric the Red and the Saga of Thortinn 
Karlsefni, told, about the year 1006 of a country beyond their own, 
where people wore white garments, carried rags on poles and shouted ; 
from which it was inferred that this must be the already known or 
rumored White ^Nlen's Land,' sometimes called Great Ireland. We 
may suppose that these little prisoners were merely echoing what they 
heard from the Norsemen around them, to find favor with their 
masters. But this would equally prove what was then the prevailing 
tradition. 

We know that the early Irish Church was the lamp of faith for 
all the west ; that St. P'atrick's conquest of the island for Christ 
aroused in it a wave of militant Christian emotion, becoming in some 
souls an eagerness to spread the gospel, in others a wild hunger for 
solitude, where life might be as nearly as possible an unbroken trance 
of religious ecstasy ; and that these combined motives drove little 
shiploads of religious mariners out in all directions with most aban- 
doned recklessness. The X^orse rovers were counted the hardiest 
and boldest men of all the world, but they could find no place where 
these Irish had not been before them. It was so in the Orkneys, in 
the Faroes, and in Iceland — and their holy-isle off shore from this 
latter home is still named for them. A well-known passage of the 
Landnamabok records their withdrawal, apparently between the 
years 885 and looo, leaving Irish books, bells, and croziers behind 
them. But that is not their earliest. Dicuil, the monastic Irish geo- 
grapher, mentions meeting, a hundred years before, one of the 
brethren who had been to Iceland ; also there are items, of uncertain 
value, in various quarters concerning an alleged Irish settlement on 
that island a century earlier still. 

In view of what they really achieved, their known fearlessness and 
very special impulsion, why should it be incredible that in one thing 
more they should outstrip all others, reaching at some point the main- 
land of America, though they might not be able to return, and their 
settlement must die out if reinforcements failed? If their supplanters 
in Iceland, the Norsemen, had not recorded the presence there of these 
ecclesiastical Irishmen it is likely that we should be debating it to-day, 
though it continued so long. 

In the beginning of the Heimskringla ' — " one of the great historv 
books of the world," as Dr. Fiske has called it, in a portion recognized 



^ See Dr. Brinton's early article in Historic Mag., vol. 9. p. 364 (1865). iden- 
tifying with Carolina by reason of Albinos. 

-Laing's translation of Heimskringla, vol. i. p. 216. 



28 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

as presenting very ancient material, we find a parallel use of the name 
" Great Sweden " for an immense region, the nearest to Sweden 
southeastw'ard across the Baltic sea ; just as Great Ireland was 
conceived to be nearest to Ireland across the ocean, southwestward. 
This Great Sweden was peopled with myths and monsters no less 
uncanny and disturbing than the deadly Uniped which drove an 
arrow into Thorvald Ericsson, or the big-eyed- apparition of menace 
or warning which inflicted herself on Gudrid beside the cradle 
and the baby, as the Flateybook story will have it ; a region obviously 
little known and open to doubt, yet occasionally reached by Swedes. 
There is no question now concerning the reality of this Great Sweden, 
nor that the references to it are historic in a way. for it is simply 
Russia. Dr. Storm ^ also observed this coincidence and added 
Magna Graecia as another example ; but somehow he remained of 
the opinion that Great Ireland was a myth or a mistaken remembrance 
of Iceland. 

An old manuscript (codex 770 of the Arne Magnean collection), 
quoted by Rafn's Antiquitates AniericaucC, is fairly explicit as to 
locality : 

Now there are, as is said, south from Greenland, which is inhabited, deserts, 
uninhabited places and icebergs, then the Skrellings, then Markland, then 
Vineland the Good. Next, and farther behind, lies Albania, which is White- 
men's Land. Thither was saiUng formerly from Ireland ; there Irishmen and 
Icelanders recognized Ari, the son of Mar and Katla of Reykjaness, of whom 
nothing had been heard for a long time and who had been made a chief there 
by the inhabitants. 

This appears to have been prompted by the following brief narrative 
in the Landnamabok of Ari the Wise (a descendant of the vanished 
man) who died in 1148. His Islendingabok says the same, only 
omitting the sources of information: 

Their son was Ari. He was driven out of his course at sea to White-Men's 
Land, which is called by some persons Ireland the Great. It lies Westward 
in the sea near Wineland the Good. It is said to be six doegrs sail west of 
Ireland. Ari could not depart thence and was baptized there. The first 
account of this, was given by Rafn, who sailed to Limerick and remained for 
a long time at Limerick in Ireland. * 

Ari the Wise adds that Thorkell Gellison, his own uncle, had heard 
the same story from Earl Thorfinn of the Orkneys. 

There is a parallel episode in the Eyrbyggja Saga (perhaps a 
fragment of the lost saga of Biorn the Broad wickers' champion) 
which has sometimes been thought a mere elaborated echo of the 



' G. Storm : Studies on the Vineland Voyages. Memoires Societe Royale des 
Antiquaires du Nord (1888), pp. 307-370; also separately 1889. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 29 

above, though Vigfusson in Origines Islandicse treats the events as 
different, while reckoning both disappearances to be a Httle earher 
than Leif's voyage to Wineland. The ship of one Gudleif, it seems, 
having sailed out of Dublin, was driven by storms to a western land 
where, after some risk from the inhabitants, they were greeted by 
Biorn, who was now a chief in his new country, but who warned 
them away as from a place of danger. Without giving his name, he 
inquired particularly about a certain woman, who was the cause of 
his exile, and about their son, sending messages to both. In con- 
clusion, the saga tells us that there was no proof of their story, but 
that most people believe they went to Great Ireland. Vigfusson ' 
appears to accept this guarded statement as presenting a fact; but 
Reeves ^ does not feel the identification at all certain ; and doubtless 
it is not. As to internal evidence, Biorn was on horseback, banners 
were carried before him and his people spoke a language like Irish : 
so wherever Gudleif went, if there be any truth in the details, it was 
not to America. We may most safely treat this story as adding no 
data to the material in hand, but merely borrowing from the better 
authenticated legend of Ari Marsson, in developing an edifying 
sequel to a well known Icelandic romance of reckless and lawless love. 
Taking the passages above quoted with the Sigurdr Stefansson 
map, hereafter more fully treated — which shows Helluland, Mark- 
land and the upper part of Wineland, and bears traditional notes 
of the latter's extension southward to the " wild sea " and to a 
" fiord," separating it from the* " America of the Spaniards " — we 
might conjecture Great Ireland to be New Jersey, or the eastern shore 
of Maryland, or Virginia south of the Chesapeake, according to our 
choice among the " fiords." All are in the deep concavity of the 
coast line between Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras ; all consequently 
lie below and behind the southern sea front of New England and 
Long Island. But precision can not really be insisted on ; for Stefans- 
son must have had very vague ideas of everything below Cape Breton, 
or else his drawing would have been extended in that direction. The 
notes are perhaps by another hand, but if so represent equally well 
the national tradition. However, Beauvois's conjecture locates 
Great Ireland on the St. Lawrence. Others have located it in the 
Mississippi Valley, or some part of Ireland itself. Storm thought it 
a sort of reflection or adumbration of Iceland. But all non-American 
identifications of this region seem rather far-fetched. 



^Vigfusson and Powell: Origines Islandicse, p. 2^. 
^A. M. Reeves: The Finding of Wineland the Good. Final Notes. 
3 



30 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

The Ari Marsson story is one of the questionable things which 
nevertheless may be true. Earl Thorlinn would undoubtedly give his 
best information to a descendant of the lost man ; but we do not know 
whether he merely repeated Rafn or had learned independently. The 
latter's account was earlier than Thorkel's we are told, but there is no 
pretence that this Rafn knew anything personally or made any close 
inquiry. Vigfusson decided that he was not anTcelander ; and noth- 
ing seems to be known of him, except that he heard the story in 
Limerick, presumably from seafaring people, and carried it to Ice- 
land. Now this is the city obviously linked with the Island of Brazil 
by the implication of the earliest fourteenth century maps. 

But it is not in Limerick sailors' yarns, however possible, nor in 
parallel nomenclature, however significant, nor in obvious infer- 
ence, popular belief and geographical statements or representations 
having no assured basis, to establish an important fact of history. 
One must feel that Irish monks, blinded to everything beyond their 
absorbing purpose, may very well have been here before any Norse- 
man ; but it seems at present be3'ond proving. 

Yet there is no warrant for treating Great Ireland as assuredly 
unreal, and reasoning therefrom by analogy against Wineland. The 
inability to prove is a different thing from conclusive disproval ; 
and we are so far from the latter that the preponderance of probability 
leans the other way. Great Ireland, White Men's Land, or Albania 
is simply an asserted region like the Island of Brazil, believed in for a 
long time by many people likely to have some inkling of the truth, but 
which, unlike Brazil, did not find its way into maps drawn by men of 
southern Europe. Great Ireland and Brazil Island may well be near 
neighbors, or overlapping names for parts of the same coast. But at 
present we should hold the matter in abeyance for further light. 

5.— THE COLONIZATION OF GREENLAND 

(/Toward the end of the tenth century various things combined 
to bring the Icelanders to America. The insular stepping stones 
out from Europe had grown more familiar than remote districts of 
their own island ; the habit of voyaging in every direction but one 
made that exception an anomaly which could not last. Furthermore, 
the aggressive missionary spirit of Christianity was rising and 
reaching forth, especially from Norway. Iceland thus far had held 
out nominally, in a spirit of conservatism, for Odin and his wife 
and the tremendous warlike Thunder ; but King Olaf ^ was urging his 
new doctrines, with appeals to commercial advantage and menaces of 



' Heimskringla. Laing's transl., vol. i, pp. 427, 445. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 3 1 

personal disfavor, which could not be without effect even in dealing 
with an independent community, since its independence was a little un- 
certain and it was linked to the parent country by many ties. His per- 
sonal prestige counted also ; why need any one hesitate about serving a 
Heavenly King whom even the redoubtable Olaf of Norway delighted 
to follow? Already he had many island adherents and the end was 
plainly near. It is curious, but hardly a matter of surprise, that the 
same year witnessed the formal adhesion of both Iceland and Green- 
land to the Christian faith, as well as the incidental discovery of 
America by a newly converted missionary sea-captain, a son of 
Eric, sailing out to the latter country with the message of Christ and 
King Olaf. 

Turning back a very little from this, the Iceland of the year 980 V 
and thereabout was in the very flood-tide of population and hopeful- 
ness, even afflicted with an excess of strenuous enterprise and uncom- 
promising self-assertion, which made every neighborhood faction 
eager to fight for its sentiments at a word, every man painfully con- 
cerned in distinguishing himself and his steel sword on others, 
every member of a family bound to avenge any wrong or slight to 
its least appendage or take vengeance indefinitely for some retaliation 
perfectly warranted by their own code. 

The last word is significant, for the thing itself was rarely lost 
sight of. The distorted and bloody law-abiding spirit of the Icelander 
has been often commented on as almost unique in history. He had 
inherited a common law, and so venerated it that he sent an envoy 
early in the island history to Norway for more perfect enlighten- 
ment. This man brought back a slightly modified code. It caught 
the popular fancy wonderfully and became a great factor in their 
daily lives, though its precepts and the decisions under them for the 
most part were carried in memory only. A singularly artificial system 
of pleading and practice grew up, every one being a stickler for 
exactness of procedure and treating legal formulas as of quite 
magical efficacy — witness the effective but unintended declaration 
of truce which the adroit Snorri the Priest, in the Saga of the 
Heathslayings, entraps a conceited memorizer into declaiming, before 
the latter knew that his most deadly enemy was beside him. 

Most of the sagas are indeed almost as much the histories of 
litigation as of private war. The two things went together. Duelling 
was fully recognized and relied on as one means of settling disputes — 
even at first, of acquiring and holding other men's wives and prop- 
erty : while the blood feud seems to have had a semi-legal status, 
gradually losing ground in theory but remaining popular, so that 



32 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

everybody indulged in it, although a dominant party or leader would 
sometimes use a tribunal to ruin an opponent for having done so, 

Eric Raudi (the Red or Ruddy) had his full share of troubles, 
and was never long without belligerent experiences proper to a 
spirited Iceland gentleman — which is about all that can be charged 
against him. Relatively blameless and most useful men appear 
sometimes to have been unjustly driven to the- lava fields and ice 
mountains, as in the case of Grettir, who robbed those who expelled 
him, that he might live. 

Eric does not come into view as an aggressor. He had left Norway 
with his father, as the best way to escape a feud. In his first Iceland 
home the beginning of tragedy was a landslide or avalanche that 
did some damage to a neighbor's land, whereupon this neighbor 
^^ laid the blame on two slaves of Eric — probably Britons or Gaels — 
and killed them incontinently. Eric flared up in fury and killed the 
slayer. This brought about the usual turbulent " lawsuit," and 
Eric was exiled from the district ; making his new home on Oxney 
(Ox-island) in the great southwestern Broadfirth. 

But he did not keep out of trouble. A friend borrowed from him 
a pair of heraldic door-posts, used occasionally, too, as ship's figure- 
heads — or possibly picture-carven sections of those partitions, often 
strikingly ornamented, that made up the box-bed enclosures in which 
our modern separate sleeping rooms find perhaps their origin. They 
were valuable at any rate, and the borrower prized them no less than 
he; so refrained from returning them as desired. In the end red- 
headed Eric went to the false friend's house with a party and took 
them away. There was a rally of the affronted household ; pursuit, 
■ sword in hand ; a small battle in the highway, in which Eric cut 
down a man or two — thereby winning distinction as a brisk champion, 
not to be imposed upon, but also unlimited persecution and disaster. 

He had made good and eminent friends in that neighborhood, one 
being Thorbiorn, chief of Vifilsdale, son of Vifil, one of Queen Aud's 
Dublin men, of whom she had said that he would be distinguished 
anywhere, with land or without it. Also, Thorbiorn, through his 
beautiful daughter Gudrid, was to be grandfather to the first-born 
white American : so there were notable issues hanging on the door- 
posts of contention and on Eric's honest impulsiveness for good or 
ill. However, they overrode him and he was driven to hide in out- 
lying islands and inconvenient places, while his enemies hunted 
diligently to find and slay him. 

Then our fugitive called to mind a ninety-year-old story of an 
unknown land over the western sea and determined to seek refuge 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 33 

there. For one Gunnbiorn soon after the beginning of settlements in 
Iceland had found the rocky islets in the Greenland sea which long 
bore his name ; ' and had passed beyond them to full sight of a 
forbidding shore, on which he remained for a season. His account 
had not tempted any one thither in later years. , That nameless region 
called for a man like Eric to open it, hardly for any other — a man 
homeless and endangered but inherently hopeful, at once astute and 
daring, and far from unbefriended. 

Those who still stood by him helped Eric to a ship, which lay 
hidden in quiet places till he could slip away with a volunteer crew, 
quite suddenly, into the unknown. 

For three years he was lost to the world,^ three years devoted to 
an exploration so careful and thorough that, according to Rink's 
Danish Greenland (a " fascinating book " as Fiske has rightly called 
it) hardly anything has remained for later search unless in the 
absolutely ice-clad interior, the remote north or the nearly inaccessible 
east. Nansen also— and there can be no better authority — ranks his 
achievements as an explorer among the very greatest. Passing 
through the narrow water gates^hidden altogether from the eyes of 
Davis late in the sixteenth century — which break at intervals the 
Coast of Desolation, he followed deep and branching fiords into 
an interrupted belt of verdure and flowers, of low trees and shrubs 
and plentiful berries, of tumbling cascades and far off glacier- 
glimpses ; and this he called Greenland, choosing it for the heart of 
his main settlement. Another area, somewhat like it, about two hun- 
dred and fifty miles up the shore, was penetrated and chosen, too, 
becoming the site of the lesser western settlement. The subsequent 
centuries have disclosed no improvement upon these, and he seems 
to have acquainted himself equally with the less valuable or utterly 
savage regions which he passed by. There is no doubt that he reached 
Davis Strait, very likely passing up beyond Disco, soon afterward 
well known as Bear Island (Blarney). He may well have stood out 
far enough from shore to see the other side. When the work was 



^ For their disappearance see note on Ruysch's (1507) map of the world, 
Lelewel's Atlas. Also Voyages of the Cabots and Cortereals b}^ H. P. Biggar, 
p. 60; also Major's Works; but Nansen dissents, believing they were on the 
Greenland coast. 

^"This happened five hundred years before the rediscovery of America by 
Columbus and Cabot. I think this Norse exploration of Greenland a thousand 
years ago equals any modern polar exploration both as regards importance and 
as regards the way in which it was carried out." Nansen in Scribner's Mag., 
Mar. IQ12. Article dated Nov. 26, 191 1. 



34 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

all done he brought back his astonishing report to the elder colony, 
calling for settlers to people this new Greenland. What he had found 
justified the name as to the region chiefly intended, but the native 
shrewdness and humor of the man come out in his announcement — 
presumably among friends — that by giving it a good name they 
would get settlers more easily. 

All at once he had become a popular hero. The tidings went 
over Iceland, awakening an eager spirit of enterprise. Here was a 
new realm won for them by a man whom they had expelled. Out- 
lawry was disregarded and died out, hardly needing a formal rescind- 
ing. One perfunctory duel for honor's sake ended the feud. We 
are told that Eric had the worst of it, and can see that he might feel 
able to afiford such a settlement, having graver matters in hand. 
Perhaps he was beginning to feel the claims of a continent. Then 
a large fleet, for the time and country, set out under his leadership, 
losing eleven vessels by the way, although the major part won through 
and safely established themselves in their new home about the year 
985. The center of this colony was at Eric's home, Brattahlid, near 
one of the branches of what is now known as Igalico inlet. Appar- 
ently he was the first judge as well as chief personage. Not far 
away, toward the other branch, the Cathedral of Gardar was built 
a hundred and forty years later. It still stands, though perhaps 
an early fifteenth century restoration, as the ruined " Kakortok 
church." In all that region Eskimo names have supplanted Norse, 
except a few added by Danes in the last two centuries. Yet from 
Greenland came the Lay of Atli and possibly Edda poems ' and Dr. 
Nansen supposes that a special school of versification had its origin 
there. 

No one who follows the career of Eric, as outlined by the often 
unsympathetic saga-men, will grudge him this hardly won triumph. 
Few characters, if any, are more clearly presented in history ; few are 
stronger and more interesting. A sea-king who never marauded ; 
a just man, careful of what was confided to him, yet insisting 
promptly on his rights at every cost ; a conservative, who could turn 
explorer off hand with better results than the work of the very best ; 
a deadly fighter who fought defensively only ; a man of hospitality, 
cordiality, cheerfulness, who never complained except when his 
Christian wife turned against him for remaining a pagan. 

He made the Norse Greenland, which stood as his monument for 
nearly five hundred years. He gave the name by which we know it 



' G. Vigfusson: Prolegomena to the Sturlunga Saga, p. 191. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 35 

Still. If Greenland be America, he was the first explorer of any part 
of America, so far as we know. He may have been the first white 
man to view the more immediate American shores. At any rate he 
gave to the world, and sent forth upon his ventures, the historic 
Leif who is first of record as making that discovery. He also aided 
in sending- forth the expedition which bore Thorfinn Karlsefni and 
Gudrid to these shores, giving Gudrid. in marriage from his house 
and seeing his son Thorvald sail oft' to death in their company. 

6.— THE VOYAGES OF MADOC AND THE ZENO 
BROTHERS 

A few early westward voyages on the Atlantic oft'er at first glance 
the hope of throwing light upon Wineland problems, but they really 
supply very little information. Nicholas of Lynn, whose work has 
been traced as far as possible by De Costa ^ and others, has left on 
various maps indications of theories derived from his northern 
explorations about the year 1360. He seems to have reached Ice- 
land, making a quick passage and presumably going farther ; but un- 
til his lost narrative " Inventio Fortunata " shall be found, who can 
tell where he went? 

Madoc of Wales has been put forward intermittently for centuries 
with zeal as the first colonizer of America. Welsh Indians, by blood 
or language, were formerly (as was supposed) discovered by his 
advocates in Florida, Mexico, the Carolina mountains, the Hopi 
pueblos, and the Mandan villages on the Missouri. One man 
declared that he was greeted in Welsh in the lobby of a Washington 
hotel by an " Asquaw " chieftain of \'irginia '' wearing ostrich 
feathers." " Stephens's newly republished " Madoc " is a veritable 
museum of these futile oddities. There is no room for Welsh, 
recent or archaic, on our Indian linguistic map, and the world. 
has grown incredulous about it. Welsh people might, however, 
have come and lost their language ; and they might blend with the red 
men so as to be indistinguishable in their descendants. We suppose 
such a result, or extermination, to have occurred in the case of Sir 
Walter Raleigh's colony,^ the Norse Greenlanders and the Spanish 
expedition, going eastward, which vanished in the Llano Estacado. 
We know it was so in the case of the Spanish Chilians, overwhelmed 



* B. F. De Costa : Arctic Exploration. Ainer. Geogr. Soc. Bull., 1880, p. 163. 
*Th. Stephens: Madoc (ed. 1893). 

*W. Strachey : The Historic of Travaile into \'irginia. (See Powhatan's 
statement.) 



36 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

and absorbed by the Araucanians. And one of the wildest tribes of 
the Peruvian mountains is said to be quite certainly in part of 
European descent (which does not show at all) as a result of a lost 
white city planted unluckily by a viceroy to overawe them. However, 
we have no proof of such experience in the case of Madoc's followers. 

Across the ocean there is some little evidence for him ; but 
either late or uncertain. That part of the History of Cambria 
attributed to Caradog of Llancarvan (died 1152) mentions Madoc 
in its last paragraph among " Prince Owen Gwynedd's many children 
by divers women." Certain abbeys brought the work down to the 
year 1270. A well known English translation of about 1559 by 
Humphrey Lloyd was afterward edited and extended by D. Powell 
with great pains, and published in 1584. Both of these modern 
writers made interpolations, which there was an honest attempt to 
distinguish by notes and markings ; but they leave the reader uncer- 
tain as to the actual facts. 

Thus the statement that " Madoc left the land and prepared certain 
ships and men and munition and sought adventures by seas, sailing 
west, leaving the coast of Ireland so far north that he came to lands 
unknown," may be due to some forgotten brother of a monastery ; 
or to Lloyd the translator nearly five centuries afterward, as the next 
sentences undoubtedly are. 

Furthermore, when we find Powell quoting from Gutyn Owens, an 
early writer, to the effect that Madoc left some of his people in the 
new country when he returned to Wales and that he afterward 
sailed to rejoin them with ten ships, it is baffling to learn from 
Stephens that close inquiry fails to supply any original and that the 
passage is not in the manuscript work to which it most often has 
been credited. Yet assuming that Powell read it in some lost book 
of Owens, and even that it be true, we still are not informed where 
Madoc went. 

Stephens also winnowed and sifted a number of pre-Columbian 
allusions or supposed allusions to Madoc in Welsh poems ; giving 
more accurate translations, which offer such unnautical substitutes 
as " walls " and " fierceness " for the sea-words relied upon. There 
remains only a small residuum, vaguely celebrating his taste for 
navigation. We may add Lloyd's reference to certain popular 
" fables " of Madoc current in the sixteenth century, but a specimen 
would be more valuable than the translator's easy disparagement. 

Davies, quoted and followed by Stephens,^ believed that Madoc 
died in Wales by the hand of an assassin before the year 1170, the 

' Th. Stephens: Madoc (ed. 1893), p. 212; see also p. 210. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 37 

date usually alleged for his voyage. This is fortified by an ancient 
quotation or so and by a reminder that Giraldus Cambrensis, who 
missed very little which seemed noteworthy, was in that neighbor- 
hood within 18 years afterward and tells us nothing about Madoc's 
voyage — a consideration which one may appreciate without any 
Welsh scholarship. Moreover, this same observant Gerald explic- 
itly blames the Welsh for their lack of interest in shipping. They 
seem to have had little to do with the ocean since Arthur's time, 
as compared with the Irish and Bretons. However, the growth of 
a legend of American colonization from the assassination of a Welsh 
prince is not conclusively made out nor easily thinkable. 

It seems more likely that he sailed, at first on a westward course 
as stated, which, if continued far enough, might land him in Nova 
Scotia or on the shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. But Madoc of 
Wales would have no compass, though the Arabs had it, and the 
Spaniards through them ; ^ and though the troubabour Guiot de 
Provins was to mention it only four years later ; and Madoc had 
no particular aim that we know of, so that, either by accident or 
design, his helm may have shifted widely. Armorica, Madeira, and 
other possible landfalls have been suggested ; but there is no evidence 
for any of them. 

If the story of Madoc is baffling through its meagerness approach- 
ing a vacuum, the Zeno Brothers ' ^ narrative is likewise baffling by 
its exuberance and confusion. Nicolo Zeno published the story at 
Venice in 1588, as his best restoration of a map and letters, which 
he had found when a boy among family documents and torn or other- 
wise damaged unthinkingly. His work seems mainly done in good 
faith and to celebrate the prowess of the earlier Zeni, with no 
thought of pitting them against Columbus ; but he used divers maps 
and books to help him out and conjectured at random, and even 
wilfully decorated a little, as though to make amends for very 
despiteful usage.' Thus " Icaria " in the original — possibly Kerry 
or St. Kilda — suggests the myth of Daedalus, which forthwith comes 
headlong into the story. Again he must needs help out a fisherman's 
yarn of travel among Indians in America by a little recently acquired 
knowledge of Aztec temples and human sacrifices. There was also a 
great shifting of harbors and towns. His most conspicuous invention 



'Th. Stephens: Madoc, p. 195. 

''■ R. H. Major : The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers Zeno. 
^F. W.Lucas: The Annals of the Voyages of the Brothers Zeno {il 
pp. 8. 83, 99. 



38 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

is Frisland, a huge island south of Iceland, identified by Mr. Lucas * 
with the Resland of Edrisi — apparently Estland or Shetland (some 
say Iceland) ; though Mr. Major thought Frisland the Faroe-islands, 
blended by misunderstanding into one and shifted to unfrequented 
seas, where it might be credible (see note 7, p. 177). In fact it took 
root there, to the confusion of explorers and cartographers for several 
centuries. Sigurdr Stefansson makes it a very little one on his map ; 
which bears the apologetic note : 

" I do not know what island this may be unless the one that the 
Venetian found." 

In getting back to the original communication, we are further 
baffled by its unintended ingenuity of misunderstanding, a habit of 
prodigious exaggeration and a genius for transforming words. When 
we read that Zichmi, ruling in Frisland, made war against the King 
of Norway, it means, according to Major, that Earl Sinclair of the 
Orkneys had a skirmish with a forgotten claimant to a part of his 
territory. Later, a warm spring on an island of a Greenland fiord, 
beside which a monastery once stood, evolves a monastery and monk- 
ruled village on an active volcanic mountain with commercially 
profitable gardening, carried on by the aid of hot water pipes — an item 
borrowed, according to Lucas, from sixteenth century Norway or 
Iceland. You soon can measure the value of such narrative and make 
due allowance for its exaggerations. There is usually some germ of 
truth to be found and the Greenland part of their map has an accuracy 
in detail which appears to mark it as based on personal observation or 
information (see Major) that Europe could not supply, although 
even this argument in favor of the story has been undermined by 
Lucas and the discovery of some ancient maps. 

It seems that an earlier Nicolo Zeno, being cast by chance on the 
coast of Frisland about 1390, was saved from the rude inhabitants 
by Zichmi, lord of the region, who took the Italian into his service. 
Nicolo participated in the wars then and afterward carried oi\ by 
the Earl, and sent for his brother Antonio, who joined him in Fris- 
land, took part in the Shetland Campaign, and wrote letters to their 
brother Carlo at home. A certain Faroese fisherman having brought 
back after a long absence a tale of strange adventures in unknown 
countries southwest of Greenland, Zichmi fitted out an expedition to 
seek them. This expedition, however, found only " Icaria," Iceland, 
and Greenland, with some minor islands known and unknown. The 
brothers Nicolo and Antonio accompanied Zichmi, perhaps about 

' Op. cit., p. 105. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 39 

1400, and wrote a narrative of this voyage, which was recast by the 
younger Nicolo. It gives our last ghmpse of civihzed hfe in Green- 
land, if accepted as veritable. The monastery by the hot spring and 
a curious description of kayaks as in use among the people, may be 
taken hesitatingly as credentials. Lucas hardly makes out a case 
against them. The warm Greenland ' spring thus utilized also occurs 
twice in Hans Egede's citations. 

It would seem that the white and Eskimo races were then inter- \/ 
changing arts, and perhaps the racial blending had begun. Similarly, 
there is mention elsewhere ' of a Norse visitor for two winters, 
beginning in 1385, who had two Eskimo servants. It was many years 
since Ivar Bardsen, then or afterward steward of the Bishop, 
accompanied, probably about 1337, an expedition of relief to the 
western settlement, threatened by the Eskirho — and found that colony 
devoid of human life. A few deserted cattle and nothing more 
remained as relics of the earliest of the Greenland mysteries. 
The preceding decade affords the curious evidence of an extant 
official receipt for the Greenland contribution of 1327 (in walrus 
tusks) to the expenses of a crusade.^ These facts and the 1347 
voyage to Markland show that the Eastern settlement at least was 
alive and in touch with both continents. Through the second half 
of the fourteenth century we must suppose that the Eskimo were 
drawing nearer and gaining ground, especially after the return to 
Norway in or before 1364 of the relief expedition of 1355 under Paul 
Knutson.* About 1379 there seems to have been another Eskimo 
attack, costing the colony 18 men. But probably peace reigned in 
1400 and as late as 1409, when a young Icelander visiting Greenland 
was married at Gardar by the Bishop and even after 1410, when 
the last authentic voyage ■" from Iceland to Greenland occurred. 

About 1418 the storm broke on them, according to a papal letter 
of 1448, in the form of a fleet of heathen, devastation, captivity, 
and death. But the destruction was not complete and in 1448 the 
colony was getting together again. A dubious entry ° of 1484 
mentions annual voyages until then from Bergen to Greenland. 
Another papal letter,' about ten years afterward, announces the 



' H. Egede : A Description of Greenland, pp. 20, 21. 
*W. Thalbitzer : The Eskimo Language, p. 29. 
"H. J. Rink: Danish Greenland, ed. by R. Brown, p. 28. 
*G. Storm : Studies on the Vineland Voyages, 1899. 
•''H. J. Rink: Danish Greenland, ed. by R. Brown p. 29. 
^W. Thalbitzer: The Eskimo Language, p. 29. 

^J. E.Olson: The Voyages of the Norsemen. Orig. Narr. Early Amei 
Hist., Vol. I. ' 



40 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

sailing of a new bishop, who never seems to have reached the colony 
or even Iceland. An effort was, however, made to reopen communi- 
cations about 1492, but nothing came of it.^ After that, there is noth- 
ing except the hints and rumors gathered by the loving care of Hans 
Egede,^ while he was hoping against hope that some remnants might 
survive behind the ice-barrier of the eastern Greenland coast in deep 
fiords, which have since been explored by Lieutenant (later Com- 
modore) Holm' of the Danish navy and others, yielding nothing. 
Admittedly the most nearly authentic of these reports, as well as the 
most thrilling experience, was that of the sixteenth century Iceland 
Bishop, Amund of Skalholt, who was driven by rough weather so 
close to Heriulfsness that he heard, or thought he heard, the lost 
people driving home their cattle and sheep in the twilight. 

Probably we shall never know just when the last flicker of civilized 
life died out of Norse Greenland ; but it may well have been some- 
where between the middle and the end of the fifteenth century. 
Darkness falls, and there is an end ; but the uncertainty and the 
marked pathos of this chapter of old history makes any item very 
welcome, even if distorted (see note 8, p. 177). 

Major's skill in clearing away the fogs from the adventures of 
the Zeni among the island clusters and in Greenland has natur- 
ally been less available for America. The fisherman who caused the 
memorable western expedition died before it started ; but the regions 
called by them Estotiland and Drogeo appear on their map as roughly 
corresponding to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Kohl * has 
suggested East-outland as a derivation of the name, with reference 
to the eastward protrusion of that great insular mass of land ; but 
there seems a difficulty in accounting for the adoption of this English 
form. Lucas ° rather improbably derives Estotiland, by not very 
confident conjecture, from the beginning of an old motto. Beauvois " 
has an interesting suggestion that Estotiland is a misreading of 
Escociland (Scotland), perhaps not clearly written in the original 
letter ; the name having been transferred to America as Great Ireland 
had been long before, and as Nova Scotia and Cape Breton were 
also in later times. This seems probable. 



'J. Fischer: The Discoveries of the Northmen in America, p. 51. 
"H. Egede : A Description of Greenland, pp. 14-22. 

■'G. Holm: Explorations of the East Coast of Greenland. Aleddelelser om 
Gronland, vol. 9. 
*The Discovery of Maine, p. 105. 
* Voyages of the Zeno Brothers, before cited. 
*La Decouverte du Nouveau Monde par les Irlandais, p. 90. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 4I 

The informant averred that he had been driven thither by storms 
with the crew of a small fishing vessel ; and was afterward sent 
with them southward by the chief of the country to a region called 
Drogeo or Drogio, on one map Droceo. Being captured by savages, 
he was transferred from tribe to tribe far southwestward, reaching 
a country of temples and sacrifices, until by good fortune he escaped 
and succeeded in making his way back to Estotiland (Escociland) ; 
thence crossing to Greenland and reaching home at last. 

Drogio has also caused much speculation, the preferred theory 
being that it is native American more or less changed. But perhaps 
this name also had a European origin, Italian in source or trans- 
mission. On Mercator's map of 1595, we find the words Drogio 
(fit Cornu Gallia (compare Cornouailles of Brittany) applied to Cape 
Breton island ; which is too far removed from the mainland, but 
unmistakable in its distinctive form. There is no mistaking, either, 
his reference to the Breton horn protruding from northwestern 
France into the Atlantic, which gave its name, early in the sixteenth 
century, through its seafaring sons, to this other long, elevated 
northern cape or ness discovered in the new world. This was always 
the next land below Newfoundland ; it was also lower in elevation, 
perhaps in part very much so, as fully half the island certainly is now. 
Possibly deroga, derogare, or dirogare, if carelessly treated, might 
evolve a Drogio fitting both meanings, if the Italian word may 
dispense with the moral implication of " derogatory." Mercator's 
identification, being but seven years later than the publication of the 
Zeno story, and, therefore, that of a geographer who could have con- 
sulted the publisher and author on any doubtful and important point, 
must be taken as more nearly authoritative than anything else which 
we have. Ortelius, about the same time, showed Drogio even farther 
from the mainland and with less fidelity to outline, but the intent is 
the same. 

This seems a revulsion from the more frequent mapping of Cape 
Breton Island as integral with Nova Scotia, which was less literally 
true, yet nearer the actual fact ; for the Gut of Canso has never been 
more than a water-thread, and there was nothing to prevent the 
continuous southwestern travel indicated by the story, with hardly 
appreciable addition of canoe-ferriage. 

Dr. Fiske is at pains to present parallels to the tale of this castaway 
in the narratives of the romancing Ingram, and the more historic as 
well as more widely ranging Cabeza de Vaca. M^e might add Selim 
of Barbary, who appeared in colonial times on the wilderness border 
of Virginia, having been carried from New Orleans to the Shawnees 



42 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

on the Ohio, and worked through the Indian country and the 
mountains, as related by Bishop Meade/ Nothing in the story of the 
Zeno-informant is more incredible than Ingram's ^ extravagances 
about the city of Norumbega, followed by other writers and perhaps 
developed from some real though temporary Penobscot Indian town. 
Yet the first part of the former offers us a civilized or nearly civilized 
Newfoundland nation, the middle is too general and easily invented 
to be quite convincing ; and the southern part, nearer the end, is a 
meager and faint reflection of Spanish observations in ]\Iexico. 

Lucas, however, must be wrong in ascribing the whole story to 
the latter source, for the Estotiland and Drogio portions have no 
Spanish earmarks and are placed too far north. On the other hand, 
Kohl in the Discovery of Maine is equally inadequate, finding only, 
as he thinks, the reflection of the general American knowledge of 
Greenland Norsemen ; for these could have had no such illusions 
about their neighbor, Markland, then known for several centuries ; 
and, on the other hand, they may be supposed quite ignorant of semi- 
civilized teocallis, temples, and human sacrifices. About all that 
could be obtained in Greenland for this little Zeno exposition of 
fourteenth century America was the existence of a timbered New- 
foundland, its protrusion into the ocean, the fact that it was inhabited, 
the great cape below it, the sea between and behind, some notion of 
a lower coast peopled by savages, and some lingering tradition of a 
warmer and more fertile region lower still, and effectively guarded 
in like manner. 

A faint shadow of corroboration may be found in Cormack's ' 
account of the surprising works of industry of the Beothuk in 1828 
and what Cartwright * has to tell us more than half a century earlier. 
There was surely something of the Norse indomitableness about a 
people who, after centuries of encompassment and continual hostility, 
could still refuse submission or even amicable relations, choosing 
destruction instead, and who inspired a terror that outlived them in 
their Micmac enemies and successors. When we read of their thirty 
miles and more of deer-fences in use when they were confined to a 
small area in the northwest of the island ; of their stone causeways, 



^Wm. Meade: The Old Churches, Ministers and Famihes of \'irginia, vol. 

I, p. 34- 

'M. Lescarbot : Nova Francia. Erondelle's transl., p. 47. Also Champlain's 
Voyages, p. 46. Orig. Narr. Early Amer. Hist. 
■^W. E. Cormack : Journey in Search of the Red Indians in Newfoundland; 
Edinb. Philos. Journ., vol. 6, 1829, p. 327. 
*Capt. Cartwright and his Journal; republished 191 1 ; before cited. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 43 

notable food-preserving inventions, and ingenuity in boat-building 
and husbanding their few resources, it seems possible enough that 
about the year 1380 there may have been some Newfoundland 
palisaded town, rather more advanced than the Hochelaga which 
Cartier found and which was soon obliterated. 

But this Italian literary curiosity of the Zeni is not such a thread of 
evidence as will bear any serious strain. 

7.— ARE THERE NORSE RELICS IN AMERICA? 

If Icelanders or Greenlanders reached our Atlantic shore, there 
will always be a possibility that some trace of their former presence 
may be found. Whether it amounts to probability must depend on 
the extent and character of that presence. There is a vast difference 
between permanent occupancy ' by thousands of people, erecting 
stone houses and bridges, churches, and monasteries, in a region 
like southern Greenland, where for centuries there were no other 
inhabitants and the forces of nature tended toward preservation, and 
the hasty visits of exploring parties and wood-cutters, or even brief 
attempts at colonizing a bit of forest country, subject to invasion by 
savages, fire, and decay. 

Inscriptions deeply graven might last even until now in dry and 
protected places. But why should there be inscriptions? Laing 
reports in his preface to Heimskringla that " few if any runic inscrip- 
tions of a date prior to the introduction of Christianity are found in 
Iceland," while Greenland, though then already occupied for 15 
years, and for centuries afterward, has not yielded one. There is not 
even a letter, runic or Latin, or a character of any kind, on the stand- 
ing cathedral walls of Gardar or anywhere within its compass, though 
repeated excavations have exhausted all the ground. Graah ^ noticed 
a tablet-like wall-stone with parallel lines on its inner face, which may 
have been prepared for such use, but the purpose was never carried 
out. There are perhaps half a dozen Greenland gravestone inscrip- 
tions of the conventional sort, in one alphabet or the other, beginning 
with the twelfth century ;and far up Baffin Bay a miniature monument 
was found about 1824, bearing the names of men who had " cleared 
land " or performed some other operation there at a date near Whit- 
suntide in the year 1135, as some read it, though others put the year 
a century or two later, apparently either as a preemption entry or a 
record of exploring achievement. Nothing more than this in the way 



H. J. Rink: Danish Greenland. 
'W. A. Graah : Narr. of an Expedition to the East Coast of Greenland, p. 40. 



44 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

of inscriptions from Greenland's estimated population of ten thou- 
sand (Dr. Rink) with an organized life exceeding in duration that 
of English-speaking America from the beginning until now ! Brat- 
tahlid's doorway-lintel, perhaps of the year 995, still held its old posi- 
tion in the middle of the nineteenth century, but this mansion of 
Eric and the homes of his long dominant descendants have not 
favored us with one carven line or letter. Surfely we must think that 
these people were not given to expressing themselves in that way. 

But human opposition and eagerness were certain to discover sup- 
posed runes and confirmatory vestiges in America when attention 
was once directed to the subject. Rafn's voluminous Antiquitates 
Americanse led the way with the Newport " tower " (since clearly 
shown to have been only Governor Arnold's windmill patterned on 
an older one in his former English home) and other equally random 
fancres. Longfellow embodied one of these speculations in a spirited 
ballad, immortalizing that squalid Fall River " skeleton in armor," 
whose copper breast-tablet and belt only antedated the ornaments 
found by Gosnold ' in use on Cape Cod, with no hope at all of such 
honor. 

The Dighton rock-pictures, with the central row of tallymarks,' 
have been many times published since the first copying by Dr. Dan- 
forth in 1680. The present rate of obliteration would have wiped 
them quite away before now, if existing conditions had been estab- 
lished then or a little earlier.'' Schoolcraft obtained an erudite 
Algonquian reading from his Ojibway experts, although the tally 
marks baffled them, and these he called runes, but afterward with- 
drew the exception. As quoted by Colonel Mallery,^ his final verdict 
was : " It is of purely Indian origin, and is executed in the peculiar 
symbolic character of the Keekeewin." These tally-like marks were 
still visible when I visited the rock in 1910, but might apparently have 
been made by any one who could carve the numeral I or an X- 

On the west shore of Mt. Hope Bay, near that noted elevation, 
is a boulder marked on its top, as it now lies, with the outline of a 
boat, having the bow enlarged or uplifted, much as a white man's 
boat will appear when the stern sets low in the water. We saw 
several like instances on Taunton River soon after inspecting and 
tracing the one above mentioned. An Indian canoe hardly could be 



^J. Brereton : A Briefe Relation of the Discoverie by Gosnold. Bibliog- 
rapher, 1902, p. 2,2. Also in Old South Leaflets. 
*See Prof. Greenwood's letter of 1730. Amer. Anthrop., 1908, p. 251. 
^Fourth Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol. (1882-1883) . 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 45 

made to look like that. It is fairly drawn in Bacon's Narragansett 
Bay, Miller's Wampanoags of Rhode Island, and Higginson's Larger 
History of America ; and a duplicate of a copy made by Mr. Bacon in 
1900 shows the other characters as published ; but some of them are 
gone from the stone and all the others have been damaged. Only the 
boat remains unhurt, though shallow. Early settlers are said to have 
been acquainted with this rock when it was in the field above the low 
cliff or bank, near the base of which it now lies. It was lost sight of 
about the middle of the nineteenth century, but afterward found 
again, having most likel}^ slipped down into the reach of the tide. 
Prof. Diman, when an undergraduate, is said to have mentioned it in 
the " Bristol Phoenix " about 1846, between the time of its loss and its 
rediscover3^ Its characters have a more alphabetic look than those 
of the Dighton rock and may mean either something or nothing. 
It must not be forgotten that Indians often depict objects on rocks 
in idleness, just as any of us may carve a bit of wood or scrawl 
careless figures and characters on a newspaper margin. Such work is 
sometimes done as an exhibition of skill before others ; and characters 
not obviously pictorial may be conventionalized outlines or random 
grooves and scratches, not necessarily even records of any fact, still 
less symbolic. Of course it is not intended to deny that pictorial 
records, such as the " winter counts," have been ma3e and preserved 
by Indians, nor that symbolic figures are used in the ritual of their 
priests ; but there can be no doubt that the tendency to find something 
esoteric or at least very meaningful in every chance bit of native rock- 
scratching has been a delusion and a snare. 

The proximity of the boulder to Mount Hope seems to mark this 
queer relic as almost certainly Wampanoag work ; and the same may 
be said with less confidence of a chain of deeply incised recesses and 
channels in the landward face of another boulder found by Mr. 
David Hutcheson ^ just off shore at high tide (bare at low tide) in a 
small cove of Portsmouth Bay, Aquidneck, across the fields from the 
railway station. Several other inscriptions, plainly Indian work, are 
figured at the end of the Antiquitates Americanae as formerly existent 
at this point and at Tiverton on the other side of the strait known as 
Sakonnet River. They seem to have since disappeared and call for no 
especial description. 

No doubt the Wampanoags, Narragansets, or their more eastern 
neighbors of like stock, are responsible for the Dighton Rock cur- 



' Charles Rau's monograph on cup stones illustrates Algonquian specimens 
of similarly connected pattern, the nearest being at Niantic in western Con- 
necticut. 
4 



46 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

iosity-shop of figures, not necessarily the result of one hand or one 
period, but these are now fast lapsing into invisibility. There is some- 
thing trivial and childish in most Indian pictorial work and this 
Taunton River contribution seems a rather aggravated case. It could 
emanate only from an infantile rudimentary people. To charge it 
or anything like it on those splendid Icelanders whose saga-literature 
remains a wonder of the world seems sufficiently absurd. 

One objection, sometimes urged overhastily, requires, however, 
a little qualification. It has been said that no rock inscription or 
pictograph could last so long on our Atlantic coast. The present 
rate of wearing away by tide- water would ensure obliteration no 
doubt in much less than the nine hundred years between Thorfinn's 
time and our own, but that rate depends on present conditions, which 
did not obtain when the pictographs were out of reach of the tide, 
as they must have been at first and long afterward. This, of course, 
does not establish nine hundred years of life for them, but only 
that nine hundred years of life may not be impossible. In 1700, 
though then partly tide-washed, they were still " deeply engraved " 
according to Cotton Mather.^ 

On Cape Cod, not far away, some forgotten hearthstones have been 
dug up as Norse witnesses ; likewise a copper plate averred by E. N. 
Horsford ^ to bear " the legend of Kialarness." They have been almost 
restored to oblivion. The same must be said of like unconvincing 
evidences occasionally reported from various points around that bay. 

The Charles River Valley near Boston is a region more zealously 
championed ; especially in the Norumbega pamphlets of E. N, 
Horsford,^ whose tablet on his pretty " Tower of Norumbega " near 
Roberts station may be styled a new birth of history as the facts 
ought to have been. But such matters can hardly be settled in 
that way. We are given positively the dimensions and industries 
of Wineland as a nation, the name and site of its capital city, the 
exact part taken by the several leading explorers and founders, 
and a variety of miscellaneous information, eminently desirable if 
true, and at all events entertaining. In tracing the sources of the 
various items it is regretted that this learned and estimable investi- 
gator was not more thorough in securing basic knowledge for his 
conclusions. 



'Quoted in E. M. Bacon's "Narragansett Bay". 
'E. N. Horsford: The Landfall of Leif, p. 31. 

*The Defences of Norumbega, The Landfall of Leif, The Discovery of the 
Ancient City, The Problem of the Northmen, etc. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 47 

The " defences of Xorumbega "^ about the base of this " tower " 
resolve themselves into a few roughly aligned rocks and a lower 
dyke of rifle-pit pattern following the curve of the hill, wherein 
a few dozen Indians or as many English colonists might have held off 
an enemy behind palisades. That they could have anything to do 
with the " city " and " quays " six miles below them is by no means 
clear. They seem a curiously futile protection, the place being acces- 
sible on so many other sides. Why must an enemy be supposed to 
follow the river? And why should the little fort be situated so far 
from base? 

At AVatertown (the Norumbega of Horsford) there are indeed the 
disordered stones of what may have been an effective rough dam 
before the present wooden one was constructed. The shores also 
exhibit embankments of sand, in which Horsford thought he dis- 
cerned wharves, quays, and divers other appurtenances of a com- 
mercial waterside. One may safely say that they are man-made and 
not recent, but beyond this there is no safe road. The dam, according 
to the investigator, was to facilitate the floating of mausur wood for 
collection and export. Searching farther, he thought he found like 
vestiges in the Merrimack and other rivers of eastern Massachusetts ; 
whence he inferred a thriving industry and a large Norse population, 
widely spread. It cannot be pretended that he has adequately 
accounted for its disappearance, with the whole inevitable retinue of 
domestic animals. This and like facts might surely have been given 
a better explanation, easy to find ; for the Indians themselves were 
accustomed to dam and dyke streams, often of considerable size, as a 
part of their wier-construction, which was an important matter with 
them, since fisheries, especially in spring, were their most reliable 
source of abundant food supply along the Atlantic. It is of record that 
the Indians taught somewhat of that art to the early Virginian 
colonists, and their skill and industry in this line excited surprise. 
The few surviving Xanticoke of Delaware, in fact, have told me that 
an old dam and a ruined fish-trap of their ancestors yet remain visible 
on Indian River, and I have been shown a mound (as of the same 
origin) which would compare favorably for size with those I have 
inspected in Minnesota. The New England dams discovered by Prof. 
Horsford were probably also Algonquian and for fishing purposes, 
with no implication of white visitors or early lumbering. It is not 
very remarkable that their remains should be found above Boston 
on the Charles River as well as below Lewes, near Rehoboth Bav. 



^Horsford: The Defences of Norumbega, pp. 10, 31. 



48 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS 0©LLECTIONS VOL. 59 

Other structure-relics of the Charles River neighborhood, con- 
fidently identified by Horsford as marking the house-sites of Leif and 
Thorfinn, " a Norse path," ^ duly photographed and published, and 
some stone walls and foundations credited with unfamiliar character 
are at least white man's work. An attempt has been made by the Hors- 
fords and some of their adherents to fasten these works on Norse 
white men, through a series of excavations on abandoned Icelandic 
homesites made by a Scandinavian scholar (which are in themselves 
very interesting) , but nothing has been established in that way aifect- 
mg the question. Many simple homes have been erected, abandoned, 
and forgotten in all the older parts of our country, for Anglo-Saxon 
America is no longer new ; and such remains do not usually dififer 
decisively among related peoples. 

The very land where this is written (in the hill country above the 
city of Washington) bears such traces of the past in different places 
and of different periods. It would be almost as easy to work out a 
more southern Leif's-booth and Norumbega above the Potomac wild 
rice and amid plentiful wild grape-vines, in accord with a " rune- 
stone " ^ found at the Great Falls ten or twelve miles up stream, if 
we may believe a sensational announcement in a newspaper of Wash- 
ington city (1867). It was no doubt a wild fiction, but honored by 
a serious Danish refutation and a note by Dr. De Costa, correcting 
some errors and substituting others. 

Finally, the Superintendent of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey 
writes that the oldest chart of Boston Harbor accessible to him, 
made for the British government in the latter part of the eighteenth 
century, shows in the channel leading to the Back Bay a ruling depth 
of two fathoms. The flats of that bay have no depth-figures, but 
were not necessarily quite bare at low tide, for those of Dorchester 
similarly shown have a four-foot depth marked on them. He infers 
that there could have been only a " few feet "of depth on the Back 
Bay flats except when the tide came in. By " few " we must under- 
stand no doubt something like the four feet of Dorchester flats. 
It would have required a light draft " fleet " to make itself comfort- 
able there in General Washington's time. At the date of Champlain's 
voyage (1660) ^ there was naturally no bay worth considering. He 
explored the neighborhood and almost certainly anchored in Boston 



'Horsford: The Landfall of Leif (frontispiece). Also Cornelia Horsford : 
Vinland and Its Ruins. (Appendix by Gudmundson and Erlendson.) 

'^ F. Boggild : Runic Inscription at the Great Falls of the Potomac. Historical 
Magazine, March 1869. 

^Voyages of Champlain. Original Narratives of Early American History, 
p. 67. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 49 

Harbor before passing on to Plymouth. Charles River impressed 
him. for he called it " very broad," named it ineffectually the River 
du Guast and speculated as to whether it rose toward the " Iroquois," 
but with all his eagerness as an observer and pains as a recorder he 
has left us no sort of indication of the existence of any Back Bay. 
What then could there have been for Venrazano in 1523, much less for 
Thorfinn five hundred years earlier, in view of the fact that this part 
of the coast has been sinking for many centuries? 

The unknown graves of Thorbrand and Thorvald, abandoned in 
a wild land, must always be themes of poetic interest — " the graves 
that the thicket covers, the graves that the rain bedews." Miss 
Horsford ^ hoped she had found the former, and if this indeed were 
only so! 

A seaboard point near Ipswich has some stonework locally at- 
tributed to Norseman as Dr. Fewkes informs me. 

A more positive claim has been put forward by a New Hampshire 
judge in the latter case, in the Boston Journal, quoted by the Phila- 
delphia Times of July 27, 1902, as follows : 

A certain field on the narrow marsh and beach on the main road up town 
[Hampton] contains the rock on which are cut the three crosses designating 
the grave where was buried Thorvald Ericsson 1004. The rock is a large 
granite stone lying in the earth, its face near the top of the ground with the 
crosses cut thereon and other marks cut by the hand of man with a stone 
chisel and not by any owner. That field came into possession of the author's 
ancestors 250 years ago. 

Even so, there are 650 earlier years to be accounted for, years of 
absolute Indian dominance; and who so likely as an Indian to use a 
stone tool in such graving ? The cross, too, has been a favorite symbol 
of all primitive religions from time immemorial. But, if we must give 
it a Christian significance, how many different kinds of Latin Cath- 
olics ranged this shore before and after the very numerous early six- 
teenth century Basque, and Breton fishermen ! There were the expe- 
ditions of Gomez, Fagundes, and Verrazano, the Spanish searchers 
after the lost De Soto, the colonizing De Monts and Champlain, 
Jesuit priests with their dusky flocks raiding or exploring, adventur- 
ous noblemen lapsing out of French civilization after the fashion of 
the Baron of Castine ! The list might be increased and the marking 
of a cross would be almost automatic on the part of any of these 
gentry. So the judge's assurance, giving it full face value, does not 
seem to take us very far toward certainty about the interment of 
Thorvald son of Eric so many centuries before. 



'Cornelia Horsford: The Graves of the Norsemen, pp. 20,40. (Bound with 
Leif's House in \'inland.) 



50 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

On the Maine sea-coast even the kitchen-midden-Hke oyster-shell- 
heaps are turned to account as Norse vestiges. " There are three 
distinct strata," the lowest representing cannibalistic savagery, the 
second, ordinary Indian occupancy. A railway folder says of the 
highest : " Prof. Putnam claims this to be of Xorse origin " ; but 
it also says that the Norse colonies in Greenland " about the 8th 
century supported 20 bishops " and that " the Phenicians are the 
legendary ancestors of these Irish Druids." Rock inscriptions on 
Monhegan Island and elsewhere are attributed to Phenicians or 
Norsemen, according to taste and individual sense of probability. 
The Monhegan inscription,^ discovered in the fifties of the nineteenth 
century, has been " interpreted " as giving the age of a certain 
chieftain, and one Canadian theorist even identified it as the work of 
Turanians not long over from Japan, who left similar messages 
in Michigan on the way. A " rune-stone " has also been found at 
Ellsworth and a double-edged dagger, " the exact likeness of one in 
Du Chaillu's Viking Age," in a cellar near Castine. Pemaquid ' 
discloses pavements and house foundations, and similar vestiges 
as well as Algonquian inscriptions are scattered up and down the 
coast and along the rivers. They may be mysterious enough to be 
Icelandic, but no positive proof takes any of these relics back of the 
early Breton visitors or the first French and English attempts at col- 
onization. 

In the Algonquian myths of Maine and the British provinces, 
Leland ' believes that he distinguishes echoes of the Eddas, proving 
Norse intercourse, but these do not impress every ear. Moreover 
Leif came as a missionary royally commissioned to spread the 
Christian faith ; and Thorfinn and Gudrid, with most of their fol- 
lowers, were in the first flush of conversion. After her return to 
Iceland Gudrid was considered nearly as a saint. Besides, these stories 
have a distinctly aboriginal air. One really cannot discern the 
contrast which Leland insists on between their quality and construc- 
tion and those of the Iroquois and Ojibway wonder tales. Of course 
there are some plots and mythical explanations which grow the world 
over out of certain human complications or insistent natural 
phenomena. It is not surprising that a Passamaquoddy Indian and 
an early Norseman should hit on similar impersonations of cold and 



' Said to be copied in Memoires de la Societe Royale des Antiquaires du Nord, 
May 14 1859. 

''J. H. Cartland : Ten Years at Pemaquid, pp. 94-103. 

^C. G. Leland : The Algonquin Legends of Xew England : also his The Edda 
Among the Algonquin Indians. Atlan tonthly. Aug. 1889, p. 223. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 5I 

hunger, of storm and electrical discharges, or weave simple dramas 
of war and home life in more or less likeness to each other. The 
chain of such evidence is not strong enough to hold. 

Lacrosse, the national game of Canada, has also been claimed by 
Hertzberg and Nansen ' as a Scandinavian contribution, but Mooney, 
who is better authority as to aboriginal idiosyncracies and probabil- 
ities, tells me that it is distinctively Indian. Nor can one easily believe 
in such an acquisition reaching the southern tribes so quickly in the 
conditions then probably prevailing. The Eskimo game reported by 
Egede seems a strained parallel and a poor partial coincidence. 
Giving the Norwegian game the benefit of all doubt as to substantial 
identity with lacrosse, we must not forget how cat's-cradle, that very 
artificial sport of ingenuity, occurs from of old in Britain and 
Polynesia (see Porter's Journal) and how even the most surprising 
expedients and preposterous customs have apparently been rein- 
vented repeatedly in remote parts of the world. 

One would be inclined to consider more seriously the double- 
headed axe and the gouge, both peculiar to Scandinavia and north- 
eastern America, which were exhibited by Holmes, December 27, 
1911, before the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science, but it may be best to imitate his caution in drawing no 
inferences. Such topics tempt the fancy and their accumulation can- 
not quite fail to leave some impress. But they prove nothing. 

Next beyond the State of Maine, and at the entrance to the broad- 
spread, lovely Passamaquoddy or St. Croix Bay, lies Grand Manan, 
theoretically one of the most hopeful, or least hopeless, fields for 
research, spreading obliquely north-northeast and south-southwest in 
the mouth of the great Bay of Fundy. Thus far, no trace of anything 
earlier than the American Revolution (and not unmistakably Indian) 
seems to have been found on that island, unless it be an anchor 
greatly reduced by long rust and ocean wear, and attributed by 
some to Champlain, though without any obvious reason. Doubtless 
many other Frenchmen anchored there in olden times, and Mr. 
Mcintosh of the Natural History Museum at St. John, New Bruns- 
wick, assures me that French anchors are often found in various 
parts of the province. Since nothing that can be identified remains 
of Champlain on or near Grand Manan, it is the less remarkable that 
we should find no trace of Thorfinn's party, who landed, if at all, 
600 vears earlier. Such traces may, however, be hidden there, for 
the northwestern side of the island presents at least 20 miles of wilder- 



^The Norsemen in America. Geogr. Journ., vol. 38, p. 574 ; also In Northern 
Mists, vol. 2, pp. 38-41. 



52 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

ness, behind precipices, towering- several hundred feet above the sea, 
and its thorough archeological exploration is an affair of the future. 

On the mainland of New Brunswick a curious medallion-like stone 
has been found near the road between St. Andrews and St. John, 
below a cliff of similar material and beside Lake Utopia, a near 
neighbor of the Passamaquoddy region. Its dimensions are con- 
siderable, nearly two feet by more than a foot and a half, and it 
bears a profile face, head, and neck in outline, shown in a drawing 
accompanying a paper by J. Allen Jack.^ He believed it to be Indian ; 
but Mr. Mcintosh thinks not. It seems to be something of a mystery, 
although no one has ascribed it to the Norsemen. 

Over the Bay of Fundy, at Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, are two rocks 
with strange markings ; one of these " inscriptions " being sometimes 
translated " Harko's son addressed the men," though this is also cred- 
ited to Nature's handiwork. I must agree with the Harko party to 
the extent of counter-scepticism concerning the probability of long 
mistaking rock-veins and the like for human letters. In that region 
they do sometimes simulate character outlines and graven symbols 
in a curious way, nevertheless almost anyone would distinguish 
the truth at a second glance, if not straining for an argument. But 
why should sensible Norsemen take so much pains to record such a 
trivial incident? More likely it is the work of Micmac Indians, 
or someone else equally removed from the Icelanders. Certainly it 
has not been accepted by most investigators. There are Micmac rock- 
pictures not far away at Fairy Lake. Also there are living Micmac 
above Digby, nearer still. 

Rumors of the Norsemen linger about the Nova Scotia seaboard. 
Of one isle we are quaintly told by a guide-book that Red Eric loved 
to make it his special haunt — notwithstanding the plain testimony of 
the saga that he was crippled by an accident in attempting to embark 
with Thorstein, and took this for a warning to explore no farther, 
so remained quietly in Greenland during the Wineland voyages. 
There seems to be nothing tangible connecting any Norsemen with 
the spot, which may not have been above water in their time. 

Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence coast, though really 
promising on general principles, have yielded, I believe, only some 
early Basque and English foundations and relics, no longer claimed as 
Norse by anyone. Just below, southwestward at Miramichi on the 



'J. Allen Jack: A Sculptured Stone Found in St. George, New Brunswick. 
Smithsonian Rep., 1881, p. 665. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 53 

shore of the mild Acadian Bay, a few slippery coincidences in names, 
customs, etc., evidence to which ethnologists now attach little value, 
have been gathered by Bishop Howley ^ and put forward with a 
certain confidence in his Vinland Vindicated. 

Labrador needs thorough searching. So far, it offers only certain 
small stone structures,^ perhaps of native origin, and an Eskimo 
legend, quoted by Packard ' from an earlier writer, concerning a 
race of invulnerable giants, roundly identified with mail-clad Norse- 
man by these white recorders. But Chambers, finding the same myth 
among the Iroquois, fastens it in The Maid at Arms on wandering 
Spaniards of De Soto's time. Yet further, we learn that other tribes 
know these tall, hard-shelled warriors in quarters beyond the reach of 
mailed Europeans. Perhaps the Norse Giants should be set aside for 
the present as fancy-figures ; it is so natural for primitive ill-defended 
people to thrill over such nightmares, which may issue out of the 
dark at any moment and do what they will with you, themselves 
unharmed. Something of it, indeed, is in or behind every well 
created ghost-story. 

The deep indentation of Hudson Bay ofifers perhaps the only 
remaining field — hardly a hopeful one. The Kensington rune stone ' 
fills it, having a legend all its own, and is now urged with determina- 
tion by certain Minnesota advocates, geographical and linguistic, 
who certainly claim consideration. This relic was found in the 
interior of Minnesota by a Swedish farmer in a Swedish settlement, 
and it seems to be admitted that the inscription itself has a Swedish 
cast. These facts, added to the remoteness of the location and 
the obstacles in the way, surely raise a presumption against it. 
There is an attempt to overcome this objection by the statement that 
the stone was under and among the roots of a tree, estimated by 
observers to be forty years old, which would carry it well beyond 
the period of the modern Swedes in that locality. But any rapidly- 
growing tree, such as our tulip tree, or most other indigenous 
" poplars," will make a greater growth than Mr. Holand's several 
statements call for in much less time than that. A tulip tree near my 
home which had not yet sprung up from the seed, in August, 1897, 
showed in September, 1910, thirty-eight inches of measured circum- 



^M. F. Howley: Vinland Vindicated. Trans. Royal Soc. Can., 1898; see 
also E. Beauvois : Les Dernieres Vestiges du Christianisme. 

'W. G. Gosling: Labrador, chap, i, 1910. 

^Alpheus S. Packard: The Labrador Coast, p. 220. 

^H. R. Holand : The Kensington Rune Stone. Records of the Past, Jan.- 
Feb. 1910. 



54 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

ference three feet above the ground. The story told by the inscrip- 
tion is improbable nearly to the point of impossibility. The runes 
are discredited by the verdicts of Messrs Dieserud and Flom and 
other competent philologists. The well-known but quite unauthentic 
map of J. Toulmin Smith, which took Thoriinn bv sheer guesswork 
to Baffin Land before his departure southward, is offered us again as 
a background for the later travels of the alleged Minnesota explorers 
by the Hudson Bay route. Biornsland parades there below Hvitra- 
mannaland, Gudleif's course to and from it being traced as conscien- 
tiously as though something could be known, or reasonably conjec- 
tured, about it or him. And little but darkening of counsel can come 
from such a suggestion as that the forestland may be northward of 
the region of stony desolation. We find no sound reason for suppos- 
ing that any Norsemen ever were in the neighborhood where the 
stone was found before the nineteenth century. 

It seems, then, that so far as investigation has gtone, there is not a 
single known record or relic of Wineland, Markland, Helluland, or 
any Norse or Icelandic voyage of discovery, extant at this time on 
American soil, which may be relied on with any confidence. There 
are inscriptions, but apparently Indians made them all except the 
freakish work of white men in our own time ; there are games, 
traditional stories, musical compositions, weapons, utensils, remnants 
of rude architecture, and residua of past engineering work, but no 
link necessarily connects them with the period of Icelandic explora- 
tion or with the Norse race. One and all they may perfectly well be 
of some other origin — Indian, Basque, Breton, Norman, Dutch, 
Portuguese, French, Spanish, or English. Too many natives were 
on the ground, and too many different European peoples, who were 
not Scandinavians, came here between 1497 and 1620 for us to accept 
anything as belonging to or left by a Norse Wineland. without unim- 
peachable proof. 

8.— CERTAIN COLLATERAL ITEMS OF EVIDENCE 

Greenland and Wineland were coupled together from the begin- 
ning in popular mention. Thus we have seen Ari the Wise, between 
the years iioo and 11 14, referring to the hypothetical natives of the 
former and the well known natives of the latter in one sentence. 
About 1400 Ordericus Vitalis referred to " Finland " with Greenland, 
apparently meaning Vinland or Wineland, since he does not seem to 
have had the Baltic Finnland in mind. Between these, in 1121, 
vyQccording to Icelandic annals, Eric Gnupson, then Bishop of Green- 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 55 

land, sailed from that country to seek Wineland, and vanished utterly./^ 
At least there is no later mention of him, and two years afterward his 
flock, who should know best, are found demanding- a new shepherd. 
The latter was accordingly consecrated (in 11 24) in the person of 
Bishop Arnold. Bishop Eric remains a lost heroic figure of history. 
It is true that the Danish poet Lyschander of 1608, and Professor 
Horsford in 1889, ag;ree concerning- his later prosperity in the isolated 
Wineland diocese ; but we do not know of anything behind their 
assertions more substantial than a cheery hopefulness. Most writers 
have supposed with Dr. Storm that he was on a missionary errand 
(though Dr. Nansen doubts this also), and that he died in trying to 
make the latter part of his title represent something real. However, 
nothing is positively known, except his passage from Iceland to 
Greenland in 11 12, followed by his attempt, nine years later, to reach 
Wineland also. 

Whosoever will is of course at liberty to believe that " Eric Gnup- 
son " was really the " first bishop " of Wineland, or with the poet that : 

Eric of Greenland did the deed ; 

He carried to Wineland both folk and creed; 

Which are there e'en now surviving. 

We see, full fledged, in these verses of the early seventeenth 
century the conception of a settled, organized, self-supporting Wine- 
land, a thriving ofifshoot, which was to Greenland what we know- 
Greenland to have been to Iceland or Iceland to Norway. The 
picture has its fascinations and seems to dominate many minds even 
yet. Nothing but proof is lacking, or at least some little glimmer of 
evidence in its favor. The real Wineland was a w-ild land, visited 
once by accident for a few weeks only ; and once more intentionallv, 
not long afterward, with three years' exploration and temporary 
abode at two points, by a party of colonists who abandoned the 
attempt and returned to Greenland and Iceland. That is all that we 
find positively recorded until 1347. This distinction, if clearly 
grasped, would have saved some misunderstanding and wasted work. 

We have shown already that circumstances about the year looo 
favored and almost ensured the discovery of America from Green- 
land ; also that the house of Eric Raudi w^ould naturally take a leading 
part in the work. There is evidence that this happened ; but as in 
most matters of remote history, the evidence is not absolutely first- 
hand. We must be content with copies of copies. The world, with 
due caution and corrections, rightly accepts and believes many things 



56 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

without that special kind of proof required by the technical restric- 
tions and arbitrary rules of convenience of English-speaking courts. 

Apart from the chief narratives — the Hauksbook Saga of Thorfinn 
Karlsefni, the closely parallel Saga of Eric the Red, and the two 
chapters relating to Greenland and Wineland in the Flate3^book 
Saga of Olaf Tryggvason — there are divers brief statements of 
very old writers, which corroborate and check them. 

Our first witness is the prebendary, Adam of Bremen, not a 
Scandinavian but a well known German geographical author and 
official clergyman, who visited the court of Denmark about 1069, 
when he might still converse there with men who had met Leif or 
Thorfinn or some of their following and heard the story from their 
own lips. His " Description of the Northern Islands " was probably 
completed in Latin in 1076, undoubtedly not much later. In the 
sixteenth century there were at least six manuscript copies extant,' 
one or more being probably in southern Germany. Two such copies, 
written out in the thirteenth century, are now in Copenhagen and 
Vienna. The book was first published in print in 1585. Its 
authenticity is undoubted. 

Reporting a conversation with the Danish King, it says : 

Moreover he spoke of an island in that ocean, which is called Wineland, for 
the reason that vines grow wild there, which yield the best of wine. More- 
over, that grain unsown grows there abundantly is not a fabulous fancy, but 
from the accounts of the Danes we know it to be a fact.^ 

Then he proceeds to tell of the " insupportable ice," and gloom of 
uninhabitable regions beyond, ending the passage with a moving 
discourse on the perils of the northern seas. Here we seem to have 
some tradition of Helluland with its savage surroundings. 

The name Wineland is superfluous to identify the more southern 
and more favored region, in view of the wild grain which is men- 
tioned, and the wild grapes capable of making good wine. The 
valuable monograph of Dr. Jenks " on The Wild Rice Gatherers of 
the Northwest plainly discloses what a staflf of life the Zizania still 
is to thousands of Indians. Many of the slow rivers of our Atlantic 
slope abound in it no less than the smaller glacial lakes. As to the 
wild vintage grapes, Lescarbof who was of those next making their 
acquaintance along this shore, vaunts wine as God's best gift to men. 



^ G. Storm : Studies on the Vineland Voyages. Memoires Societe Royale des 
Antiquaires du Nord, 1888; also separate 1889. 

' Translation in Reeves's "The Finding of Wineland the Good," chap. 6, p. 92. 
■■'Ninth Ann. Rep. Bureau Amer. Ethnol., p. 1018. 
■* Nova Francia. Erondelle's transl., p. 97. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 57 

excepting- only bread. Those large grapes are here yet and still 
wild, ranging above the middle of New England along the coast; 
their abundance then is plentifully attested and beyond all doubting. 

Quite recently we have been invited to find a sufficient explanation 
of Adam's words in his credulity which resembled that of many other 
old writers, in the possibility that he might have read or heard of a 
statement by Isidore' of Seville attributing wild grapes, messis 
(perhaps grain) and vegetables to the ridges of the Canaries ; in the 
fact that some ancient Irish sea-stories mention grape islands — 
as well as apple islands and other delectable places— and that he 
might have heard of them; and in the etymological, mythical, and 
every way mysterious relation of the unusual verbal form which 
we translate Wineland the Good (perhaps more adequately the 
Blessed) to the Isles of the Blest, the Fortunate Isles, the Irish Isles 
of the Undying and the fairy isles and hills of Scandinavia. But 
as Adam of Bremen adds no word, magical or otherwise, to plain 
Wineland — nor, for that matter, is any word added by the saga — we 
need not linger over the final point. 

But is it not curious that Adam himself gives us no hint of these 
classical, Irish, and north European sources ; that the next European 
visitors, Verrazano and Cartier, Strachey and Brereton, Champlain 
and Lescarbot, are equally reticent in this regard, and equally positive 
about the grapes ; that the European writers who followed Adam 
of Bremen used his material freely but abstained from this particular 
statement as though to save their credit. Fearing this, he had taken 
pains to protest in advance that it was " not a fabulous fancy " ; but 
the asseveration evidently was distrusted. 

It may be objected that the sixteenth and seventeenth century 
Europeans had nothing to say about the wild grain, but Cartier's "" 
" wild grain like rye " on the southern shore of the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence can be nothing but wild rice plainly distinguished as it is 
by him from the cultivated maize which he met soon afterward as 
an article of diet and called " millet as large as peas," even after 
he had seen it growing at Hochelaga. Neither he nor any other 
European would consider the wild rice after making the acquaintance 
of this greater cultivated Indian corn, which had nearly eclipsed its 
rival even among the natives. But in its absence the former was 
highly important to all. In our present corn belt, even wheat holds 
its ground beside maize almost wholly by alternation; but there 



'Nansen: In Northern Mists, vol. i, p. 345> and other passages. 
"The Voyages of Cartier. Orig. Narr. Early Amer. Hist. 



58 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

could be no alternation between maize and wild rice, for they require 
different conditions of moisture. So the latter had become only an 
occasional variation of diet in Virginia, as Strachey seems to say, 
perhaps not being- used at all farther northward ; and the maize fields 
flourished. The French and English explorers gave prompt heed to 
them, and the first settlers who followed were kept alive by their 
yield. At an earlier time, the wild rice-patches would have been their 
only reliance — an effectual one if the crop were rightly watched and 
harvested. 

But this would be a more impressive gift of nature to Icelanders ; 
who brought no grain with them, raised none at home, and rarely 
before had enjoyed the prospect of bread for their tables ; yet who 
knew both wheat and grapes well enough from their trading voyages 
to Ireland, England, and France, and from other experiences abroad. 
It is incredible that Leif or Thorfinn should need any explanation of 
the ordinary kinds of grain or of wine. 

Adam names no Wineland explorers ; perhaps he did not hear of 
them nor care for them. To him they would be only obscure citizens 
of a rude northern republic ; and his chief informant. King Sweyn, 
may not have felt any greater concern in the matter, though it 
would appear that some of his own subjects were thought to have 
visited the new region. 

With Ari Erode (the Wise), next in order, the case was radically 
dift'erent. Names and historic items, exactly given, were of prime 
importance to this every way remarkable man. He had set himself 
to tell in detail the story of the beginnings of Iceland, omitting 
nothing important which concerned any notable family of any 
neighborhood ; a great national service never before undertaken 
anywhere ; and he carried it through admirably. It is hardly 
exaggeration to call him the father of conscientious modern history. 
At least he began about iioo the glorious prose literature of Iceland 
by a succession of investigations and records which the world has 
found invaluable. Born in 1067 and dying in 1148, he filled a long 
life with this excellent w^ork. 

It was his habit to learn, when he could, from the very men who 
had taken part in the events related, or, this being impossible, from 
those who had heard the story in that way, or to use the next best 
authority that was attainable. Thorkel Gellisson, his uncle, is thus 
quoted by him as having contributed certain Greenland items, 
derived at first hand from one of the companions of Eric the Red. 
Other informants were the foster son of Hall of the Side ' and the 



' G. \'igfusson : Prolegomena of Sturlunga Saga. p. 28. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 59 

daughter of Snorri the Priest, two leading early Icelandic chieftains. 
A'igfusson mentions six others in his masterly preface to the Stur- 
lunga Saga. W'ith this tendency and his opportunities it is nearly 
certain that Ari the Wise often heard the Wineland narrative in all 
its forms from the descendants of Gudrid, for example Bishop Thor- 
lac Runolfsson, whom he undoubtedly knew. 

There is no question that Ari wrote the Islendingabok, which sur- 
vives in a later abridged version or Libellus also by his hand. The 
Landnamabok is probably in great part his too, excepting the entries 
of the eastern settlements and certain later additions, carrying the 
story down beyond his time, though his share in it has been double. 
He perhaps also began the long series of historic sagas ^ as one of the 
authors of the Kristni-Saga and the Konungabok, narrating respec- 
tively the conversion of the island and the deeds of Norwegian kings. 

In each of these four books Wineland is mentioned ; always as 
though readers would naturally be familiar with this item of history 
and geography. Once, being better known, it defines the supposed 
location of Great Ireland ; and again, by a rather loose analogy, con- 
tributes its Skraelings to identify the as yet unseen inhabitants of 
Greenland, who had left some savage debris behind them — broken 
boats, discarded tools, and empty hovels. The Landnamabok has 
also a brief reference to " Karlsefni who found Wineland the Good, 
Snorri's father " — every one plainly being supposed to know all 
about these personages. 

The Kristni-Saga says of King Olaf TryggA^ason : 

He sent Leif to Greenland to proclaim the faith there. On his voyage Leif 
found Wineland the Good ; he also found men on a wreck at sea, therefore he 
was called Leif the Lucky. 

The Konungabok passage is similar: 

Leif, a son of Eric the Red, passed the same winter in good repute with King 
Olaf and accepted Christianity. And that summer, when Gizur went to Iceland, 
King Olaf sent Leif to Greenland, to proclaim Christianity there. He sailed 
that summer to Greenland. He found men on a wreck at sea and succoured 
them. Then also he found Wineland the Good and arrived at Greenland in the 
autumn. He took with him thither a priest and other spiritual teachers and 
went to Brattahlid to make his home with his father Eric. People afterward 
called him Leif the Lucky. But his father Eric said that one account should 
balance the other, that Leif had rescued the ship's crew and this that he had 
brought the trickster to Greenland. This was the priest. 

The vellum copy of this book, known as Frisbok, may be, according 
to Mr. Reeves, the oldest extant manuscript mentioning Wineland. 



' Vigfusson and Powell: Origines Islandicse. 



6o SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

There are references to the region and events which happened there 
in Other ancient narratives which have never been even partly 
ascribed to Ari. Thus, to much the same effect, proceeds " The 
Longer Saga of Olaf Tryggvason," which, by the way, is not the one 
in the Flateybook: 

King Olaf then sent Leif to Greenland to proclaim Christianity there. The 
King sent a priest and other holy men with him to baptize the people and to 
instruct them in the true faith. Leif sailed to Greenland that summer and 
rescued at sea the men of a ship's crew who were in great peril and lay upon 
the shattered wreckage of a ship ; and on the same voyage he found Wineland 
the Good and at the end of the summer arrived in Greenland. 

This passage ends like that of the Konungabok. 

Also the very old Eyrbyggja Saga, two vellum pages of which 
date from 1300 and one entire copy from about 1350, relates that: 

Snorri and Thorleif Kimbi went to Greenland Thorleif Kimbi lived 

in Greenland to old age. But Snorri went to Wineland the Good with Karls- 
efni; and when they were fighting with the Skrellings there in Wineland, 
Thorbrand Snorrason, a most valiant man, was slain.^ 

This Snorri, the father of Thorbrand, is of course not to be con- 
fused with Snorri the little Winelander, son of Thorfinn Karlsefni 
and Gudrid, Thorbiorn's daughter. 

Dr. Nansen calls attention to a narrative in the Longer Saga of 
King Olaf the Saint in which the latter is made to speak of Leif 
Ericsson without calling him Lucky or mentioning his discovery. 

Besides narratives, there are divers geographical notices, following 
an old formula with modifications. Reeves and Rafn have quoted 
them in their works above mentioned. All agree as to the relative 
positions of Helluland, Alarkland, and Wineland along the American 
coast. One already quoted from the Antiquitates Americanae (A. M. 
Codex 770), omits the name Helluland, but makes the meaning 
sufficiently clear by the substitution " deserts, uninhabited places and 
icebergs," indicated as " south from Greenland which is inhabited." 

Always this series of regions is located " south from Greenland." 
Usually they are identified as belonging to Europe. In two or three 
instances an extension of the formula occurs, suggesting the con- 
nection of Wineland to Africa, with inevitable implication of heat 
and luxuriance. In " The Finding of Wineland the Good " Mr. 
Reeves takes some pains to array these instances. Probably they rep- 
resent the usual teaching of the northern schools during several 
centuries. 

His most significant quotation is from the Arne Magnean MS. 
194 (8 vo.), a miscellany partly in Latin, partly in Icelandic: 



'A. M. Reeves: The Finding of Wineland the Good, p. 18. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 61 

Southward from Greenland is Helluland, then comes Markland ; thence it is 
not far to Wineland the Good, which some men beheve extends from Africa, 
and, if this be so, then there is an open sea flowing in between Wineland and 
Markland. It is said, that Thorfinn Karlsefni hewed a "house-neat-timber" 
and then went to seek Wineland the Good, and came to where they believed this 
land to be, but they did not succeed in exploring it, or in obtaining any of its 
products. Leif the Lucky first found Wineland, and he then found merchants 
in evil plight at sea, and restored them to life by God's mercy; and he intro- 
duced Christianity into Greenland, which waxed there so, that an episcopal 
seat was established there at a place called Gardar. England and Scotland are 
one island, * * * 

Dr. Storm attributed, not too positively, the unique and perfectly 
warranted hypothesis of an " open sea (the strait of Cabot) flowing 
in between Wineland and Markland " to a certain geographically 
minded Abbot Nicholas ^ of Thingeyri, who died in 1 159. This would 
imply still greater antiquity for the accepted statement about Africa, 
which it accompanies as an after-thought and corollary. Note also 
that the passage preserves a tradition of disappointment hardly so 
clearly stated elsewhere. Apparently the carven door-post, or what- 
ever else the doubtful name house-neat-timber may convey, was cut 
in Markland ; and their next move, according to the saga of Thorfinn 
Karlsefni, took them that spring into temporarily pleasing quarters, 
where they afterward underwent a trying winter and nearly lost 
heart. This timber must be that which the Flateybook saga represents 
him as carrying to Europe and selling at a good price, then learning 
that it was mosur or mauser wood and worth far more — on all 
accounts a very doubtful anecdote. We shall have more to say of 
this material. 

From 1285 to 1295 there are a series of entries in the Icelandic 
Annals concerning a certain new land west of Iceland, apparently 
including " the feather islands." This land and islands were found 
in the first year above given, and Land-Rolf, the zealous advocate 
of an expedition to thoroughly explore them, died in the later year 
named. During the interval he had been authorized and sent out 
by King Eric and had traveled through Iceland, gathering volunteers. 
If he had lived a little longer, something more might have come of 
it. We must not insist over-precisely on direction, which these and 
later people used very loosely. That it should be Markland, found 
again from another point and believed to be a new discovery, may 
seem strange, but to suppose with Reeves that the entries mean a 
part of Greenland — so much nearer and so long and well known — 



' More emphatically credited with the same in J. Fischer : The Discoveries of 
the Northmen in America. 
5 



62 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

is surely even more so. Perhaps the conspicuous out-jutting elbow 
of America, barely insular, which includes Newfoundland, was 
alternately visible and not visible to the knowledge of northern 
Europeans during several centuries, getting a new name — as Brazil, 
Forest-land, New-land, Escociland — every time it was brought again 
especially to attention, although the older name might also be used, 
as for another region. 

This was a common phenomenon in old geography. Some early 
maps give Greenland a minor duplicate in " Grocland," oflf its west 
coast yet not so far as America ; and the Faroe islands called Fris- 
land, while retaining their place, gave birth in cartography to a 
fictitious great Frisland far away over the ocean. The name " feather 
islands " was applied later in substance to divers bird-crowded 
islets (for example Funk Island, Cartier's Bird Island) along our 
northeastern shore. On the whole it is likely that the latter was 
touched at some point, probably Newfoundland or near it, by these 
thirteenth century discoverers who effected so little. At any rate 
some such episode was currently related. 

Arngrim Jonsson,^ one of the few Icelandic authors who mentioned 
Wineland in the gray dawn of modern life, had for disciple and 
coadjutor young Sigurdr Stefansson, a grandson of Bishop Gisli Jons- 
son of Skalholt, Iceland. Sigurd afterward took charge of the dioces- 
nal school at that place, unhappily being soon drowned in a neighbor- 
ing river at 25 years of age. His chief memorial is a map of the 
northern regions, which has been copied by Torfaeus, Higginson, 
Wiess, Vining, and others, but not always quite accurately. Although 
it is a late document (probably 1590, though marked 1570) both its 
cartography and notes bear valuable witness to the tradition of his 
country, where national memory has always been most tenacious and 
at its best. This map shows a mountainous or hilly peninsula, marked 
Promontorium Winelandium, with its tip nearly opposite southern 
England, a tapering gulf behind it, and irresistibly suggesting by 
position and appearance a more slender Cape Breton Island — say 
the long, thin part beyond Bras D' Or. The narrow Gut of Canso, 
which now barely separates this area from the mainland, was of 
course unknown or disregarded, as by some of the European voyagers 
and map-makers of the sixteenth century. But this promontory was 
not considered the whole region or country of Wineland, for a note 
near the inner end of the Gulf behind it — hence also near the region 
about the head of the Bay of Fundy — states that Wineland is not far 



' G. Storm : Studies on the \'inelancl Voyages, before cited. 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS 



VOL. 59, NO. 19, PL. 6 



*m '" '"' '" "■ f" 



IM rnn l,rii | l|ii 'im mi tljf im ma md ■» ■» la 




iiiiL m ui| --iiii nil fin mii^jii uy.wi jj 



SIGURDR STEFANSSON MAP OF 1570 (1590?) 
(From Studies on the Vineland Voyages, by Gustav Storm) 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 63 

from that point ; it also tells us that Wineland is called " the Good " 
from " its fertility or the abundance of its products," and the writer 
seems unconscious of any occult meaning. Another note adds that 
it is believed to border at the south on the " wild sea " and to be 
separated by a fiord or inlet from the America of the Spaniards. The 
former statement would fit either Nova Scotia or southern New 
England ; the latter tempts one to recognize the Chesapeake, near the 
southwestern shore of which de Ayllon had planted his ill-fated little 
colony anticipating Jamestown. But we must not press inferences 
too far or too confidently. 

Scandinavia ' supplies the Honen inscription of loio to 1050 A. D., 
existing in copy only, but held authentic by Prof. Bugge. It includes 
fragmentary letters which seem to make up " Vinland," with allusions 
to its remoteness in the seas and to neighboring cold regions. Dr. 
Nansen, however, thinks its " Vinlandia " may be a myth, located 
anywhere. 

Taking all these minor evidences together, we find them affirming 
that there were three distinct regions south of Greenland, namely, 
Helluland, Markland, and Wineland, in that succession southward ; 
that Wineland was perhaps cut ofif from Markland by water, but was 
not very distant, at least in its northern part ; that its northern end 
was a promontory, and its southern face abutted on the sea, though 
it was perhaps connected to Africa ; that it was prolific and especially 
notable for its spontaneous yield of grain and grapes ; that Leif 
■ discovered it by accident and Thorfinn Karlsefni visited it, fought 
there with natives, losing Thorbrand, the son of his friend Snorri, 
and withdrew in disappointment ; that Thorfinn's own son Snorri, 
was born in Wineland, and that he and Leif found valuable wood 
fit for carving. From the names we know that Markland was forest- 
clad and Helluland a region of flat stones and desolation. Perhaps 
we may fairly add that Wineland was understood to be of great 
extent, almost marching with Markland at its upper limit and with 
the later Spanish possessions at its lower. In other words it included 
perhaps all between the Chesapeake and the Gulf of St. Lawrence ; 
but there is no need to insist emphatically on these boundaries. 

This is the sum of our information ; but even without any Wineland 
saga we should not be quite in darkness. Now, if there be two or 
more versions of the Wineland discovery and exploration, the pre- 
sumption, other things being equal, strongly favors that one which 



'H. Hermannsson : The Northmen in America. Islandica No. 2 (Bibliog- 
raphy). See also Nansen: Tn Northern Alists. vol. 2. 



64 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

accords with these miscellaneous ancient data and the traditions 
embalmed by them. It so happens that there are three versions, two 
being so nearly identical that each of them fits the above items and 
differing only in minor details and special modes of statement : 
whereas the third, that of the Flateybook, though preserving many of 
these features, differs radically in others and adds a great number 
which are inconsistent therewith or inherently improbable and have 
no corroboration whatever. 

9.— THE THREE SAGAS AND THEIR RELATIVE STATUS 

The three extant sagas of Greenland colonization and Wineland 
discovery and exploration are very old manuscript copies on vellum, 
all the original documents being lost — as in other and even more 
important cases, where we must rely on secondary evidence for all 
that we believe of the past. Two of these sagas occur in compilations 
— Hauksbook and the Flateybook already mentioned — such as were 
often made for monasteries or prominent men, desiring to preserve 
in convenient form the literature or records which they valued. Mis- 
cellaneous matter therefore accompanies the sagas : Hauksbook, for 
example, having contained the Landnamabook and the Kristni-Saga, 
which Bishop Bryniolf separated for convenience in recopying, 
though they at last reached the same (Arne Magnean) collection. A 
few pages were lost in this disintegrating process, but these do not 
affect the Wineland narrative, which has always remained in the 
body of the book. 

A. M. Reeves in The Finding of Wineland the Good has carefully 
worked out and authenticated all that is known of the history of the 
three sagas. Hauksbook, it appears, was copied for and partly by 
Hauk Erlandsson, a descendant of Snorri, the Winelander, son of 
Gudrid and Thorfinn ; Hauk being also a well known personage of his 
time, a lawman in Iceland, as well as a knight and lawman of Norway, 
where he died in 1334. The work on this compilation is supposed to 
have begun much earlier and was probably completed at latest in 1332 
during his last visit to Iceland. Hauk wrote in person the final 
passage of the saga, bringing the list of Snorri's descendants down 
to his own time and including himself by name and title (herra, 
acquired in 1305) ; also he copied about half of page 99 and two lines 
of page 100, his handwriting being well known and exemplified by 
a still extant letter. The remainder of the saga was copied by two 
assistants, known as his first and second Icelandic secretaries, the ink, 
penmanship, and orthography changing as they replace each other 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 05 

in the task. There is no evidence that he or they composed any part 
of the saga except his genealogical pendant ; but the contrary appears 
from the occurrence of every passage, excepting it only, in the parallel 
but verbally independent saga of Eric the Red. This fact causes also 
a very general belief that the latter was the title of the saga which he 
transcribed, but for some reason the copy in the Hauksbook began 
in the middle of one of the parchment pages with a blank space above 
it, as though the title had not been determined upon. Possibly he 
grudged the supremacy, even in title, of the founder of Greenland, 
believing his own ancestor's achievements more important still ; yet, 
finding the usage well settled, he may have hesitated to disturb it. 
In the eighteenth century " The Saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni and 
Thorbrand Snorrason " was written in for title by Arne Magnusson, 
the greatest of Icelandic collectors and an authority whose every 
action or utterance is held significant ; but whether there were any 
better warrant for this than convenience and completeness remains 
unknown. It is usually styled The Saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni ; and 
must obviously have been copied between 1305 and 1334; but not 
from the same copy as the above mentioned saga of Eric the Red, for 
the differences between them, although slight, run through every 
part of the story, making everywhere for rather less archaic and 
graphic diction in the former saga and, when there is any difference in 
matter of substance, for less exact statement — a policy hardly to be 
carried out by three men in the same way through a whole saga. 
Hauk's close supervision might account for such changes, if we could 
suppose any sufficient motive for making the story everywhere a little 
less good as literature and in some places a little less serviceable as his- 
tory. His career and his choice of material for the compilation do not 
favor the hypothesis of carelessness or lack of discrimination. Since 
these variations, then, can hardly be due to accident or to editing, we 
must suppose two slightly dififerent antecedent copies — one being a 
little nearer the original than the other — from which the two surviving 
sagas were independently made. For convenience of distinction we 
adhere to the two names, but believe that the remote original bore 
Eric's name only. 

The Flateybook's title-page recites that it was copied by two priests, 
whose names are given, for John Haconsson, known in other instances 
as a patron of such labors, the relevant parts of it being finished, as 
supposed, about 1387 or certainly before 1400; though there have 
been later additions, which do not concern us. This makes the 
transcription about three-quarters of a century later than that of the 
Saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni, roughly stated. 



^ SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

The parts in question form two chapters, separately imbedded in 
the Sag-a of Olaf Tryggvason, which is an important feature of that 
miscellaneous and bulky compilation, these having for titles respec- 
tively, A Brief Narrative of Eric the Red and A Brief Narrative 
of the Greenlanders, but being adapted to form a connected minor 
saga when put together. Probably this was their normal condition 
and the scribes dislocated them to build them into the longer saga, a 
common practice of that period. At any rate they have often been 
restored to this hypothetical continuity and so published, usually as 
The Saga of Eric the Red. This is manifestly confusing, an earlier 
claimant of that title being already in possession. It will be better 
to designate it The Flateybook Wineland Sag-a. The Flateybook is 
considered the handsomest as well as the most copious of all the Ice- 
landic manuscripts. Formerly its Wineland narrative was some- 
times assumed to have been composed in Greenland, perhaps from the 
nature of the two headings of its sections ; but we do not know that 
any sagas were written there and discover nothing like affirmative 
testimony in this instance — which, indeed, seems close to a decisive 
negation. For the Flateybook version robs Eric's house of the claim 
to first discovery and charges his daughter Freydis with atrocious 
unbelievable crime. No one in any way connected with Eric or 
accepting his or his son's leadership could be expected to tolerate it. 
Even remote descendants would not enjoy the hearing or reading. 

Some Scandinavian writers (see Reeves's notes) have credited this 
version conjecturally to the north of Iceland, others lay stress on the 
undoubted first finding of it as an heirloom in the west on Flat- 
island of Broadfirth, but cannot follow the trail much farther. 
Back of its rather late emergence there is a long period unaccounted 
for, and its place of origin is unknown. 

The Arne-Magnean vellum MS. 557 quarto, containing the third 
of these old sagas, must have been copied about 1400, according to 
Vigfusson and other Icelandic authorities. Its transcriber did not 
have Hauksbook before him, because he copied more archaic terms and 
even some slight verbal errors, not in the saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni, 
but evidently from the lost original or an intermediate copy — most 
likely the latter. Also, as pointed out by Prof. Olson, it does not have 
the ending of the pedigree, which Hauk personally added. 

A. M. Reeves mentions two verbal items, which, on the face of 
them, appear to favor the Flateybook. It gives the name Midiokul 
for the first point in Greenland sighted by Eric, adding that it is " now 
called Blacksark." The Thorfinn saga calls it Blacksark only ; that 
of Eric the Red, perhaps by the transcriber's error, calls it only 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 6/ 

Whitesark — the Hutisark of Olaus Magnus. But the composer of 
the remote common original of the last two sagas may not have 
remembered the earliest name or may have passed it by as unim- 
portant, and the passage does not occur in the Wineland-voyage 
narrative, but in the preliminary account of the achievements of 
Eric Raudi, which may rest on a different time basis. In any case 
it would be a slight reed to lean on, supporting the burden of so much 
contrary evidence. 

Likewise of the two Brands. The two parallel sagas say " Bishop 
Brand the elder," which of course could not have been written 
before the second Bishop Brand was consecrated — in 1263. The 
Flateybook says " Bishop Brand " only, which might have been 
written at any date after the consecration of the first Bishop of that 
name and before that of the second one, but also may have been 
written after the latter event, if the Flateybook saga-man happened 
to lose sight of one bishop. Moreover this is in the genealogical tail 
of the story, presumably added from time to time, as we see in 
Hauk's case, and does not throw any more light on the date of the 
body of the saga than a birth-entry or death-entry in a family Bible 
throws on the date of the neighboring book of Genesis. 

Hauk Erlendssen might not notice the omission of the elder Brand 
or of a mountain's obsolete name — if he knew it — but he was too 
prominent and cordially interested a descendant of Thorfinn and 
Gudrid not to be an authority — probably the best one then living — • 
on the family traditions of descent and achievement ; so his copying 
and evident endorsement of the saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni is a 
strong argument for its claims, as to all the main points at least, 
though he should probably have given it the original name The Saga 
of Eric the Red. 

In particular, how can we suppose him ignorant whether his 
ancestress was the granddaughter of Vifil of Vifilsdale and went to 
Greenland as an unmarried girl with her father Thorbiorn ; or 
whether she was picked up, a kinless woman, by Leif from a wreck 
at sea, together with an otherwise unknown and quite apochryphal 
first husband, Thori the Eastman ? Either Hauk was thus incredibly 
ignorant, or he wilfully falsified the record to glorify his ancestors, 
or the version preferred by him is the right one. The former two 
alternatives contravene his known standing and character, as well as 
all the early writings (except the Flateybook) touching this subject ; 
the third has simply nothing but the Flateybook against it. 

This instance is characteristic of the latter's elaborated saga, which 
must have been produced at so late a day that liberties with family 



68 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

history were felt to be tolerably safe. Yet it seems to have been 
almost suppressed for two centuries, Mr. Reeves's ^ diligent search 
having discovered but one copy made from it, as against about thirty 
made from the other two sagas, which, in general outline, chief 
events and most minor details, are really one. It seems, then, that 
the Flateybook saga never can have had much influence in its own 
home until put forward in print by scholars of Continental Europe ; 
whereas the earlier and simpler form of the narrative was accepted 
as authentic not only by the descendants of the explorers but by their 
Icelandic neighbors and fellow countrymen. 

Their styles afford another criterion ; it being well known that 
hardly any literature is so directly, impressively, and nobly epic, 
so Homeric in quality, as the early Icelandic sagas, but that, as always, 
the first flush of power was succeeded after a time by greater (or 
more obvious) self-consciousness and love of adornment, producing 
good work, yet not so good as before and easily distinguishable. 
Even in the English translation we must feel that the saga of Thorfinn 
Karlsefni belongs to an earlier and nobler period than the Flatey- 
book story. 

Scandinavian scholars, more intimately enlightened, bear this out 
with emphasis. Storm insists that the composition of the latter saga 
cannot long have preceded its copying, thus making the date perhaps 
1350 to 1380; whereas he suggests 1270 for the other narrative; and 
the later consideration of Finnur Jonsson, an excellent authority, 
quoted by Olson ' with approval, carries this back to 1200 confidently. 

Embedded in that early prose are two epigrammatic fragments of 
verse, which no doubt antedate all sagas, following a general law the 
world over. Storm has shown that their metre indicates the eleventh 
century and Reeves has pointed out a very archaic choice and form 
of language. There has been difficulty in exactly determining the 
meaning, and some variants in certain later copies apparently have 
none in part, the sounds and forms persisting without it, through 
reverence for tradition, as often happens everywhere. They claim 
on the face of them to have been composed in Wineland during Karl- 
sefni's expedition, and though no great reliance be placed on this, 
we may be sure that they are the most nearly contemporary com- 
positions on the subject (except his sailing directions embedded in 
the saga) which we are ever likely to see. 

The framework of the two versions may be compared instructively. 
According to " Eric the Red " and " Thorfinn Karlsefni," Leif the son 



A. M. Reeves: The Finding of Wineland the Good. Appended Notes. 
•Julius E. Olson: Original Narratives of Early Amer. History, vol. i, notes. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 69 

of Eric accidentally discovered Wineland as already stated. Thorstein, 
his brother, failed in an attempt to reach it the next year and returned, 
marrying Gudrid soon afterward. That winter he died. After a 
time she married Thorfinn Karlsefni and set out with him for Wine- 
land. They reached in succession Helluland, Markland, the peninsula 
of Keelness, the Wonderstrands and Straumey and Straumfiord of the 
sea currents. They made their home for the winter, first in a bay 
behind Straumey, then on the island itself ; finally on both, getting 
the benefit of both regions. In the spring they went south, finding 
another bay or loch called Hop by them, into which a river flowed, 
passing thence by a strait to the sea. Here they spent a year, but 
at last had to leave on account of the hostility of the natives. They 
returned to Straumey and spent another year there unmolested, 
incidentally exploring the other side of Keelness, apparently the 
southeast shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, including a part of 
what is sometimes called the Acadian Bay. Here Thorvald their 
helmsman, another son of Eric, was killed by an archer of great 
activity, whom they thought abnormal. Quarrels among them- 
selves about the married women caused their return to Greenland, 
thence to Iceland. Biarni, one of Thorfinn's noblest companions, 
went down at sea on the way, having given his life in a sinking ship 
for that of an unworthy follower. 

The Flateybook saga, it would seem, rewards this Biarni by making 
him, not Leif, the accidental discoverer of Wineland, he being on the 
way from Iceland to Heriulfsness in Greenland, following his father 
Heriulf — a relationship unknown to Landnamabook. He touched 
three lands, evidently meant for those of Karlsefni taken in reverse 
order, the upper part of Wineland being first found. Biarni did not 
die, but safely reached the shore in front of his father's house, on his 
first approach to Greenland, an improbable achievement often sub- 
stantially repeated in this saga. Leif blamed Biarni for not landing on 
any shore that he discovered, so he borrowed Biarni's ship and sailed 
forth to remedy the error. He found the three " lands," this time in 
north-to-south order, and built, " Leif's-booths " on the shore of a bay, 
which seems a composite of the southern Hop and the northern bay 
behind Straumey. He returned to Greenland for no reason given, 
picking up Thori the Eastman and his wife Gudrid from a wreck on 
the way. 

Next, Leif's brother Thorvald borrowed the ship and the Wine- 
land house and reached the latter without any recorded difficulty. 
From this abiding place he explored the coast westward a long way 
and afterward explored eastward also to Keelness, turned that cape. 



yO SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

found and killed eight natives and sustained in the ship the resulting 
attack of many canoes. An arrow from one of them killed him and 
there is a pretty bit about his burial at Crossness. His party returned 
to Greenland. 

Next, Thorfinn, having married Gudrid, sailed with her to find 
Thorvald's grave, not Wineland in its own right. They were beaten 
about and returned unsuccessful, squarely hitting in the first land- 
fall his home at Lysufirth far up the coast. He died, and she returned 
to Ericsfirth and married Thorfinn Karlsefni in due course. 

They sailed, and found Leif's-booths and dwelt there. Gudrid gave 
birth to Snorri. Indians came and they trafficked and fought with 
them, but at last withdrew to Greenland from that hostility. Thorfinn 
carried Wineland products to Europe and bought property near his 
former home in northern Iceland, where he lived and died. 

Last of all, Freydis led an expedition to Leif's-booths, quarreled 
with companions about occupancy and other things, and in the end 
very wantonly and treacherously compassed the murder of a whole 
ship's crew, chopping to death all the women, after capture, with her 
own hand. She returned with a false tale, but Leif suspected and 
tortured her followers into confession, though he spared her as his 
sister, while predicting evil. 

It will be seen that the Flateybook saga substitutes five voyages 
that reached Wineland for only two, using as additional leaders nearly 
all the names made prominent in the earlier narrative. Necessarily 
it has divided up Kiarlsefni's experiences and geography and filled 
them out with other matter to make them go around, thus causing 
confusion. For the same reason and to be more exciting, minor items 
and hints have been elaborated, sometimes with misunderstanding, 
and in other instances with shifting of place. For example Thor- 
vald's death in battle, Christian sentiments and picturesque burial — 
the result of a wanton massacre properly punished — seem to have 
been worked up from two simple unconnected items in the saga of 
Thorfinn Karlsefni, put together for dramatic effect ; and the mo- 
mentary frenzy of Freydis before the yelling Indians is interpreted 
as furious malignity and developed into a nightmarish and quite 
unbelievable episode. Perhaps, as Dr. Storm suggests, the reference 
to quarrels over married women may have been another germ 
in this case, though affording little material. 

In substituting a voyage from Iceland for a voyage from Norway, 
the probability of an accidental view of America, as he points out, 
has been destroyed. Greenland is so near Iceland that any one 
missing its lower tip would discover and put about long before 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK "J I 

crossing the very much greater interval to America, whereas the 
full widtli of the ocean would leave many chances of strange happen- 
ings and miscalculations in times before the mariners' compass and 
accurate means of observation. It is not known that any ship out 
of Iceland for Greenland ever made America first, but long after 
Thorfinn's time, Cabot with far better equipment, and a century 
later Hudson, sailing from northwestern Europe for Greenland or 
the extreme northeast of Labrador, were directed to a more southern 
shore ; the former by a discouraging southward drift of ice, the 
latter by the bodily force of storms. Prof. Horsford ' has compiled 
and printed an instructive chart, showing the recorded drift of many 
derelicts and storm-driven vessels to New England under the domin- 
ance of the currents from the north and the prevailing winds. But 
to fall within their power one must sail low enough. 

Leif's alleged Wineland house, too, is a monument of improba- 
bility — being found by each one of the later parties, with years 
between them, and always incredibly ready for occupancy, even 
after the neighboring savages had gone to war with the temporary 
white intruders and would have liked nothing better than to loot and 
burn. It is hardly necessary to cite the angry Indians who " pulled 
out the cross " ° from the grave of " Champlain's " follower and 
" digged up the body " to make their savage sport with it. Why 
should they spare an enemy's home ? We need not pick out and dwell 
upon all such untenable items. Mr. Reeves has afforde^ every 
facility in The Finding of Wineland for a word by word comparison, 
either in the original handwritten Icelandic, or the same in print, 
or the printed English translation. It is disappointing to find Dr. 
Fiske declaring of the additional voyages, " it seems to me likely 
that the Flateybook here preserves the details of an older tradition 
too summarily epitomized in the Hauksbook," for surely the law of 
literary development is from the simple to the complex. There are 
some exceptions, perhaps ; but the internal evidence is strongly 
adverse to the supposition that we have one before us. Dr. Fiske's 
notes clearly show that he had not seen the above work of Reeves 
and the English translation of Storm's paper until after his own text 
was prepared ; and he can hardly have given them adequate considera- 
tion. The Flateybook Wineland saga bears the familiar marks of 
derivation and development. This does not necessarily mean that 
the composer of it had " Eric the Red " or " Thorfinn Karlsefni " 



'Horsford: The Landfall of Leif, p. 42. 

-M. Lescarbot : Nova Francia. Erondelle's transl., p. 105. 



JT. SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

before him, or either of the parchments from which they were copied. 
More hkely there was another copy or more than one, almost identical 
in some parts — for whole sentences are practically repeated, though 
not always in the same place — but with omissions, additions, and 
changes ; and further traditional material, oral or written, may 
have been worked in for the first time during transcription. Thus 
Gudrid's antecedents and first appearance differ widely in the 
accounts, as we have seen, but there is a close parallelism in the 
episode of the western settlement, though some passages are not com- 
mon to both. Undoubtedly we find greater dignity and deeper 
tragedy in the Hauksbook version, particularly as concerns the 
behavior of Gudrid herself in the grief and horror of that uncanny 
death-night. It seems the elder form, but the other must have 
developed early. Both put words of prophecy in Thorstein's mouth, 
most reasonably explained as, at least in part, of later interpolation. 
They display a knowledge of Gudrid's religious eminence toward the 
close of her life and the subsequent prosperity of her family. 

The Flateybook Wineland saga is chiefly important as at least 
partly independent testimony to much that is recorded in the others ; 
and for some items which it adds that seem authentic. If all else 
were lost, we might still learn from it of Helluland, Markland, 
Wineland and Keelness, their relative position and their chief char- 
acteristics ; the island north of the lower end of the land, which is 
almost the direction of Grand Manan after rounding the south- 
western tip of Nova Scotia ; the behavior of the tide and the great 
shallows left on the ebb, suiting equally Thorfinn's great currents 
and what may be seen now along the lateral bays and rivers of 
the Great Bay of Fundy the fiord-indented mountainous shore of 
New Brunswick and Maine just beyond ; the voyages of Leif and 
Thorfinn ; the birth of Snorri and the death of Thorvald, both 
in Wineland ; the savages who had furs to trade and were im- 
provident in dealing, who took flight at the bellowing of a bull and 
afterward attacked the settlers with fury ; the two days' sail between 
Helluland and Markland and between Markland and Wineland — ■ 
with divers other matters alike in all versions. As added items we 
have Thorfinn's stockade, a precaution which he would be likely to 
borrow from his enemies after danger threatened ; the piling of 
timber above a cliff, perhaps as now, where a shute or runway shows 
at the north point of Grand Manan ; the tall and striking figure of 
the hostile chief ; the wooden structure on an island, possibly a shed 
or bin for wild rice gathered by Indian women, who are still the chief 
garnerers of the northwest, and a much-expounded statement that 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK J^i 

the sun had eyktarstad and dagmalastad on the shortest day of 
winter. 

The history of the controversy over this latter item will be found 
in Reeves's notes appended to The Finding- of Wineland the Good, 
with the verdict of two astronomical experts, working independently 
on both sides of the Atlantic, that it proves only a northern limit about 
the upper end of Newfoundland. In other words, Leif or rather 
Thorfinn can not have been farther northward than this at the time of 
taking the observation, but may have been somewhat farther south — 
how far is not stated. 

Bishop Howley ^ presents what may be called the gastronomic 
view, as opposed to the celestial. Dagmalastad is admittedly break- 
fast-time, and the eykt measured the interval to the afternoon meal. 
Thus regarded, the Icelanders were merely expressing their satis- 
faction at being able to eat both meals by sunlight every day through 
the winter. Of course they were sailors and practical would-be 
settlers and this view is somewhat tempting at first glance. 

But they really could take observations at need after a fashion, 
and were willing to report the same for the people at home ; as in 
the celebrated case of that Arctic expedition in 1266, which went 
farther than any one could follow it until the nineteenth century. 
The sun, they reported, shone about July 25th over the gunwale of 
a seven-oared boat on the face of a man lying across the bottom with 
his head against the opposite rail. Also at a given time the sun was as 
high at midnight as when it was in the northwest in settled Green- 
land. The first latitude depends in part on the height of the gunwale 
and the exact position of the man's face; the second on the chosen 
point of the settlement. Probably there was approximately a stand- 
ard size and pattern of boat and Gardar would be understood as the 
home observatory ; so these two made after all a pair of rough and 
ready indications ; from which Raf n deduced a parallel between the 
75th and 76th degrees. Thalbitzer thinks they probably did not pass 
the 73d, but bases his estimate on matters of the coast-outline 
rather than calculation. This primitive nautical observation makes 
a good precedent for the Flateybook statement, which also has an 
authentic look, although there is no record of it before 1387 or there- 
about. 

Apparently it relates to the northern dwelling-place beside 
Straumfiord, which may well come within the limits allowed by the 
modern astronomers' calculation, especially if we allow for some 



^Vinland Vindicated, before cited. 



74 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

looseness of language as in the other case. It is true that the char- 
acteristics of Hop are blended with those of Straumfiord in the con- 
fusion of this corrupted saga ; but the latter preponderate on the 
whole and we cannot suppose the more southerly point to be intended. 
Grand INIanan would have made a good observatory. But no doubt 
Dr. Fiske is right in holding that the context implies a length of 
winter day which surprised them ; so it must have exceeded that at 
Dublin, or even Rouen, which they currently visited in their trading 
voyages. Perhaps we might add Bordeaux, taken by their Norse 
kinfolk a century or two before and which they may have known very 
well, but this after all is hardly certain enough for reliance. 

They were no doubt the first observers of the difference between 
isothermal lines and lines of latitude crossing the Atlantic ocean, a 
dislocation which the human mind even yet finds it hard to realize 
or regard as quite natural. Some point in southern New England 
seems called for ; though possibly Yarmouth or Eastport might do. 

It would be interesting to know whence these bits of really 
illuminating tradition drifted into the Flateybook version, but they 
cannot offset the grave charges against it. The preference long and 
generally given this later derivative and corrupted saga has been one 
of the chief causes of investigation going astray. Two others are a 
persistent conception of Wineland as an organized continuing colony 
and the innocent acceptance of the present seaboard as that of the 
year looo. Of course there are still others. 

Dr. Fiske says in a note it " is like summer boarders in the country 
struggling to tell one another where they have been to drive — past 
a school-house, down a steep hill, through some woods and by a saw 
mill " ; for " the same general discription will often apply well enough 
to several different places." This is an apt illustration of the muddled 
and unhelpful presentation of locality in the Flateybook, but does 
not apply at all to the graphic, precise, and individualized sailing 
directions of the earlier Hauksbook saga, or still better, its companion 
Eric the Red. 

Bishop Bryniolf, with a discoverer's delight, no doubt impressed 
the importance of his ample and beautiful prize on Torfseus and the 
royal recipient, and it was most natural that the historian should put 
its version prominently forward in his history (1705), the first of all 
books on Wineland, though printing with it the Saga of Thorfinn 
Karlsefni ; also that the great von Humboldt, knowing no Icelandic, 
should accept his verdict and consider mainly in the Examen Critique 
those two chapters from the Tryggvason saga, though not failing to 
note the evident effect of long continued oral transmission on an 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 75 

originally simple story. Successive writers, in rather lengthened 
series, mainly took their cue from these works, with little heed to his 
warning, so that their widely differing schemes of the explorations 
were based on the Flateybook's entangled, blurred, disjointed and be- 
wildering data — and likewise the objections of the sceptical dealt 
often with items misreported or lacking foundation. Rafn's volu- 
minous Antiquitates Americanae, though doing the great service of 
presenting almost the entire array of Scandinavian evidence and 
urging the subject effectively on public attention, repeated this time- 
honored error, adding to it the Newport tower, the Dighton rock, 
wild Indian-corn and other damaging credulities. Even Vigfusson's 
Origines Islandicae, published long after his death, held in the text 
the same ground about the Flateybook, contradicting one of its own 
notes, and provoking Professor Olson's very natural suggestion that 
*' some hand less cunning than Vigfusson's " had perhaps been at 
work. Similarly Fiske's Discovery of America adheres generally in 
the text to the Flateybook, though its notes feel the influence of 
new light recently received. 

Dr. Gustav Storm of Christiania was the first to present effectively 
the true state of the case in his pivotal Studies on the Vineland Voy- 
ages, an English translation of which will be found in the Memoires 
de la Societe Royale des Antiquaires du Nord 1888. Reeves followed 
his lead (1890) in The Finding of Wineland the Good, a work char- 
acterized by Dr. Fiske as " the best book we have on the subject in 
English or perhaps in any language." Probably it is so, if by " best " 
we understand the most accurate and elaborate within its limits, rather 
than the most original. It is the only one giving facsimiles of the 
vellum pages of the Wineland sagas and an approximately complete 
list of the extant later copies, its reproductions in print of the original 
Icelandic, with line for line carefully stated English translations, are 
accepted as the most reliable and it adds by footnotes and final notes, 
in data and commentary, a very great amount of new and highly in- 
structive material. But he passes by almost wholly the subject of 
localities which his forerunner had treated with great care and, as to 
most points, I think, with nearly exact insight. Dieserud^ (1901). 
in a valuable paper before the American Geographical Society, and 
Olson in his condensed and clear preface to the Voyages of the 
Northmen in the Scribner's series " The Original Narratives of Early 
American History " have emphatically taken the same ground ; which 
is not likely to be lost again. 



^Jiiul Dieserud: Norse Discoveries in America. Reprint from Bull. x\mer. 
Geogr. Soc. 
6 



'j(i SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

10.— THE MOST AUTHENTIC WINELAND HISTORY 

Reeves, treating the two parallel sagas as practically one, has 
presented an English version which follows the " Thorfinn Karl- 
sefni " Hauksbook almost exclusively in the text, giving by foot- 
notes the corresponding words of " Eric the Red," where these 
differ. It will be better to reverse this preference here, incidentally 
mentioning such divergencies of the first named saga as may seem 
helpful. 

Two centuries at least intervened between the events narrated and 
the composition of the earliest form of the complete saga. We have 
to consider, then, just what this word means and how far what it 
stands for may be relied on after so long a time had elapsed. Saga, 
we are told, meant story, broadly ; though a more restricted signific- 
ance is given by later usage ; and stories, of course, are of many kinds. 
The Book of Ruth, Freeman's Norman Conquest, Mark Twain's 
Innocents Abroad, and Henry James' ghastly The Turn of the Screw, 
are all undeniably stories. In early Iceland the case was the same. 
The Heimskringla is an honest rendering of history on the great 
scale, very picturesquely given, for a long line of northern kings, 
in accordance with the tests and standards then available ; the Banda- 
manna Saga is an almost dainty bit of comedy, with social and political 
strategy for its fabric and an altogether delightful prodigal father, 
artfully helpful at need, for its very most winning figure ; the 
Volsunga Saga is perhaps the greatest of myth stories, wnth Shake- 
spearean dramatic qualities in all its later portion, as Andrew Lang 
has written ; the Saga of Nial the Burned — -one of the great works of 
the world — contains as sound and noble characterization as may be 
found anywhere and the most complete of all presentations of the 
practical working of early law ; the Grettir Saga is a Robin Hood 
romance, touched with human sympathy and deepened to awful 
tragedy by the haunting of evil eyes, dead and damned, never relent- 
ing, which bring fear where no fear was and force him to endure 
the company of assassins rather than face the dark, so preparing his 
inevitable doom ; the Saga of Cormac is a string of his poems or those 
attributed to him, like so many beads, on a fine thread of wayward 
northern love-story and travel ; and the same may be said of Gunnlaug 
the Serpent Tongue, though in a more comforting and cheerful key. 
The list of deviations might be very greatly increased without effort. 

In a field so varied every way, there should be room for a ship's 
log and business-like statement of explorers' notes, afterward filled 
out with items and episodes derived originally from members of the 



NO. 19 X0R5E VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 'J'J 

party. This is what we seem to have in the voyage-section of the Saga 
of Thorfinn Karlsefni. But of course we should be on our guard 
against all signs of later sophistication. 

It certainly means to tell the substantial truth, as did most of 
the writings, not avowedly mythical or fanciful, of that early time. 
The period of extravagances, like the Arrow-Odd Saga, of imitations 
and forgeries and of literary sentimental productions, often very 
pretty but quite openly fictitious, like Frithiof's Saga and the Saga 
of Viglund the Fair, was yet far ahead. The conscientiousness of 
the Landnamabook had set the pace, and men wrote historically, 
anxious not to vary from the essential truth of what had befallen. 

Unfortunately only a minority of these earlier Icelandic sagas 
remain — some thirty-five in all; for the world has lost a great 
treasure. It is natural that we should prize them, even overrate 
them, when we are induced to know them at all ; but we must not 
regard them quite as we should the modern painstaking work of a 
Parkman or a Motley. Their composers were quite without our tests 
of probability in many things, notably in things supernatural. Even 
the ghost-game was under different and prodigious rules, which we 
find out of keeping ; for a ghost came usually in the body and 
veritably out of the grave or dripping from the sea, and he could 
be clutched and broken and killed like a man. With them the grue- 
some, fully believed in, quite reached its climax. What iron nerves 
the northern people must have had to support existence ! 

]\Ioreover, like all unsophisticated non-analytical folk, these nar- 
rators were liable to confuse their own inferences with what actually 
was, or could be, known ; the best of them is as ready as any Greek 
historian with his word-for-word dialogues of two centuries earlier, 
though these were admittedly unrecorded at the time of utterance and 
most unlikely to linger for a week without change in any mind. The 
truth of the sagas ^ is not then in all cases that of absolute precision. 
They aimed to present past conditions and occurrences in the most 
graphic and dramatic fashion, making them live again for the reader 
or hearer. Apparently the Old Testament narratives were their 
model ; their own histories developing and diverging from it in so 
far as their customs, ideals, and beliefs differed from those of its 
writers, and the work of each saga-man being conditioned by the 
special material before him, as well as by his individual gifts. 

The first sagas were doubtless very simple and oral, having for 
contemporaries brief stories and spell-songs in verse, occasionally 



'Yet see Laing's preface to Heimskringla, p. 188, concerning the local fidelity 
of the Orkneyinga Saga. 



78 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

carved in wood in the runic alphabet, as told U5 by Egil's Saga ; 
magic formulas and sailing directions, besides other useful memoran- 
da, being also thus preserved. Such tales were a part of education, 
as well as a means of entertainment, wherever people gathered, say 
at the Althing, or about their home-fires in the long halls during 
the earlier hours of winter nights. 

When Ari Frodi inaugurated Icelandic prose literature a little 
after the year i loo, the experiment " took " as we say, but most of 
his disciples or emulators must have found it easier to write briefly. 
Later the tales of a neighborhood or those that hung about a notable 
man would often be welded together by other hands. If this work 
were done mainly by one writer there would be general unity of 
style and literary effect, but with the original elements yet distinguish- 
able. The great sagas are all of this composite character ; yet with 
this imposed artistic unity, though it may be harder to dissect Egla 
or Laxdaela than the Eyrbyggja Saga, which almost dissects itself. 

Our Wineland saga, though not the longest, is clearly of their 
class and kind. It seems that a shorter Saga of Eric the Red and 
one of Thorfinn Karlsefni's voyage must have been thus united in it, 
including also parts of a lost saga of Leif — other fragments of the 
latter being represented perhaps by the Thorgunna chapters of the 
Eyrbyggja Saga. The same hand has polished and kneaded it all, 
introducing some illustrative adornments like the incantation scene, 
chiefly, though not quite exclusively, in the preliminary Greenland 
section. There seems to have been great care on the part of this 
final saga-man, say of 1200, not to confuse or distort Thorfinn's careful 
memoranda of coastal geography. 

As the saga comes to us, the contrast in subject matter is obvious 
and great. The phantoms, miracles, magic, and prophecy are all 
in the earlier Greenland part, the sailing directions all in that relating 
to Wineland. The former must be considered an historical romance, 
embodying all that we know of Red Eric, as well as Gudrid's ancestry 
and early life, her loves and bereavements ; the latter is a matter of 
fact statement of her unique adventure in exploration with her hus- 
band, adding bits of information and episodical anecdote. The record 
making the backbone of this voyage-history might have been origin- 
ally in very few words, not vastly exceeding the inscription found on 
one of the Women's Islands in Baffin's Bay. That such guides to 
future explorers, travelers, traders and colonists were matters of care 
and conscience to competent early navigators appears very clearly 
from Champlain's seventeenth century account of the way to get into 
the Penobscot, Ivar Bardsen's fourteenth century account of the way 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 79 

to reach the Greenland colony and the ancient memoranda repeated 
by the 12th century Landnamabook. There would be plenty of 
Opportunity for that brief Norse record, during their shipboard life 
and the three \\'ineland winters. So careful a man as Thorfinn, with 
such a wife as Gudrid beside him, seeking to plant a colony and 
show others the way, surely would not have left this important matter 
to the chances of memory only. Runes would have answered very 
well, the task being light and easy. The result is the only saga of 
exploration, with just one other to be doubtfully excepted. 

The residuum of verse ^ in it may seem odd company for coast- 
notes and distances, though Thorhall's derision in that form had a 
very practical turn at the end of an unsatisfying winter ; but verses 
often appear in Icelandic sagas. Sometimes they are the known pro- 
ductions of the poet-champions celebrated, or imitation of their 
work, both kinds being exemplified by the sagas of Cormac and 
Egil ; sometimes, as in Gretla, they are chiefly foreign interpolations 
of no taste nor skill ; or again they may be real or supposed relics 
of older balladry. In the Saga of the Heath-Slayings — that savage, 
unforgettable epic, which somehow recalls the equally intense and 
primitive old Scotch border-ballad with the refrain " and my gear's 
a gone " — the basic tales in verse are not always quoted from, but 
cited occasionally by the prior author's name. Both plans are largely 
and about equally adopted in the Eyrbyggja Saga. 

In the Saga of Eric the Red, a not extravagant ingenuity may 
distinguish the episodes of Thorhall the Huntsman, the Gaelic Run- 
ners, the Battle at Hop. the Death of Thorvald, the Markland 
Captives, and the Death of Biarni, each easily separable and individ- 
ual, as probably single ballads in their original shape. That of the 
Gaels Haki and Haekia has been inserted in the wrong place, presum- 
ably by the final saga-writer, making them find grapes and grain 
before finding birds' eggs and having an overlapping joint with the 
context, more instantly obvious than that of the two creation legends 
in Genesis. This anecdote, if veracious, belongs evidently to the 
next autumn at earliest. 

The place-names of the saga have been transferred from Iceland, for 
example. Hop, Straumey, and Kjalarness, just as Oxford of Mary- 
land or Plymouth of Massachusetts derived their names through 
English colonists from English towns ; or they are descriptive and of 
general application where the same conditions prevail, as Markland 



'Prof. Diman's critique of De Costa's "Pre-Columbian Discovery." North 
American Review, 1869. vol. 109. p. 269. 



8o SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

or Helluland ; or commemorative, as Biarney, where they slew a 
bear. Furdurstrandir, The Wonderstrands, if not obviously and 
precisely descriptive, is descriptively explained in the sagas, only 
one meaning- being given by them ; which there is strong reason to 
accept. However, Dr. Nansen dissents (see In Northern Mists), 
and would make it commemorate some undisclosed wonders, or pos- 
sibly a memory picture of beautiful tropical islands, seen or heard 
about or of mythical heavens anciently modeled thereon. The topic 
will be resumed in a later chapter. The name is not on the Iceland 
maps, and Mr. Stefansson of the Library of Congress, a south-Ice- 
lander by birth and long residence, does not know of it there. 

Apparently this is the one invention of the explorers in local nomen- 
clature and one of the most significant items of their saga, defining 
aptly the impression of the typical American sea-shore of intermin- 
able strand and dune, which they could never have encountered be- 
fore and would never afterward find elsewhere. It would have been 
equally unknown to the later saga-man or even to Hauk Erlendson, 
who copied him in the first third of the fourteenth century since 
neither of these could be aware of anything distinctively American 
except from the Wineland sagas and traditions. 

The methods of naming above-mentioned overlap in some degree, 
so that it is not always possible to say whether old, general associa- 
tions or new observation have had the greater share. One would say 
that these Icelandic visitors were rather more careful than some 
of their successors to avoid such incongruities as the Naples of 
interior New York, or as Snow Hill, a county seat beside a small 
cypress-bordered river in a flat farming region near the sea. But 
no doubt it is safe to distrust unlikely and uncorroborated explana- 
tions of the saga names or events, especially where we are given a 
choice of two in dififerent versions ; for example, the alternatives 
about Keelness or thd two accounts of the first finding of the grapes. 
They have the air of afterthoughts, accounting for or illustrating 
some item as to which there was no further light, but which the 
saga-men, or the composers of material which they incorporated, 
were not self-denying enough to merely leave as found. 

The personages of the story were born, and for the most part 
reared, under the Northern pre-Christian religion ; so it would 
not seem strange to find Thor's name occurring as frequently as that 
of Jesus still does in Mexico, or as those of St. Patrick or St. Michael 
do in Ireland ; yet it must be admitted that Thord, Thorhall, Thor- 
biorn, Thorwald, the two Thorsteins, Thorgunna, and several others, 
occurring in a single saga, not of the longest, may be counted exces- 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 8 1 

sive. Some of these are borne out by the Landnamabok ; others are 
possibly stop-gaps of later invention occurring chiefly in the least 
historical parts of Eric the Red, preceding the voyage of Thorfinn. 
As already indicated, the incantation scene, the death of Thor- 
stein, and other episodes, though good Icelandic folk-lore and excel- 
lent imaginative literature, are by no means to be treated as unalloyed 
fact. There seems no especial reason why we should look for greater 
accuracy as to names. Some of those not supplied by independent 
and trusted authority may be derived from sound tradition ; but 
here we have little to guide us. Their accuracy or inaccuracy does not 
touch the general course of the voyage — any more than errors in a 
roster of troops would disprove the battle of Saratoga. 

1 1.— THE STORY OF THE FIRST AMERICAN MOTHER 

Gudrid is unmistakably the heroine of the saga and fills admirably 
a good part of its Greenland section — as winning and nobly gracious 
a womanly figure as may readily be found in any literature. The 
greatest of feminine explorers, the inspirer of the earliest attempt to 
colonize America and sharer in all its hardships, and the mother of 
the first-born white American, she must not lightly be passed by. 
Her father Thorbiorn held his ground after Eric's first departure and 
for some years declined his invitations to Greenland. But Thorbiorn 
was somehow losing ground among his people ; and felt this brought 
home to him unbearably when a disparaging offer of marriage for 
Gudrid (as he considered it) was urged by an old friend, of whom he 
expected kinder things. Apparently she felt with him ; for there 
seems to have been no attempt at dissuasion, even when he called their 
numerous well-wishers together in a great banquet, made a speech 
about his honor and, lavishing gifts on them all, announced his 
intention to sell out and emigrate. Perhaps she may have shared 
his adventurous longing for the chances of life in a new field and 
found no resisting magnet in any oi her numerous Iceland suitors, 
indicated by the saga. 

All that remained to them went in that ship, and certain friends 
joined the company, to their cost in some instances, for there was 
sickness and death on the way. It was indeed a dreadful voyage, of 
prolonged storm and unceasing hardship and danger; but they won 
at last to the lowest settled peninsula of Greenland, Heriolfsness, 
where they were received for the winter. Remains of a church and 
other vestiges have been considered to mark the spot ; with no abso- 



82 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

lute certainty, however. Judging by other sagas ' dealing with the 
colony, it was the point most often first reached by all newcomers, 
working up toward Ericsfirth or Gardar, and sometimes they had 
to remain there literally for a season. Presumably it was also the 
chief point of departure of the little Greenland fishing fleet, and any 
disaster to it, or any ill success, would be felt there most quickly and 
severely. One Thorkel was then in possession at Heriolfsness, accord- 
ing to the saga. 

The misfortunes of the emigrants were not yet quite ended. The 
storms which had quite roughly used them were unfriendly to their 
entertainers also, for most fishennen had come back with light catches 
" and some had not returned." The infant Greenland colony suffered 
and was stinted. As the winter drew on, Thorkel and his neighbors 
grew anxious and depressed. Pagan still, though with a slippery grasp 
on the old belief, they decided to call in the aid of a seeress or 
prophetess having occult powers ; who shows us what Scott's Noma 
might have been in the palmy days of her craft and in cheerier vigor 
of life. It was her custom to visit on invitation various homes, where 
the people gathered in the hope of good words for the future as the 
spirits might give her light. Thorbiorg was her name and she was the 
youngest of nine sisters, all with this gift of prophecy, a truly formid- 
able array. Says the saga'': 

When she came in the evening, with the man who had been sent to meet her, 
she was clad in a dark-blue coat, fastened with a strap and set with stones 
quite down to the hem. She wore glass beads around her neck, and upon 
her head a black lamb-skin hood, lined with white cat-skin. In her hands 
she carried a stafif, upon which there was a knob, which was ornamented with 
brass, and set with stones up about the knob. Circling her waist she wore a 
girdle of touch-wood, and attached to it a great skin pouch, in which she kept 

the charms She wore upon her feet shaggy calf-skin shoes, with long, 

tough latchets, upon the ends of which there were large brass buttons. She 
had cat-skin gloves upon her hands, which were white inside and lined with 
fur. When she entered all of the folk felt it to be their duty to offer becoming 
greetings. 

She was provided as usual with a sort of throne on a dais and with 
special food, a leading feature being the hearts of every animal which 
could be procured in that region. She would not prophesy the first 
night, but slept in the house ; and the next day had a circle of 
participants formed before her. Then she called for some woman to 
sing a certain " spell " of subtle power ; but there was none to be 
found who knew the song until Gudrid owned that it had been taught 



^ E. g. The Saga of Thorgisl. Origines Islandicse, Vigfusson and Powell. 
*A. M. Reeves: The Finding of Wineland the Good, p. 2>2,- 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 83 

her in Iceland by her foster mother ; yet it was of such nature that 
she must not sing it now, being a Christian. Thorbiorg made answer 
that she might sing it nevertheless to aid her friends and be no 
worse woman for that; yet left the matter in the hands of Thorkel. 
Under this urgency and in plain contrast to her father's course, for 
he had withdrawn altogether, Gudrid admitted at last that she felt 
bound to do her part for those about her ; and all, as they listened to 
her singing, felt that they had never heard the mystical song 
rendered so sweetly. Thorbiorg was very gracious in requital, 
thanking her for luring among them divers spirits which most often 
held aloof and would answer nothing, but loved such a treat. With 
this aid, she promised improved conditions for the colony ; and for 
Gudrid, abundant prosperity and distinction, ranging beyond her, in 
Iceland, to her lucky descendants. Then she departed and the 
scandalized Thorbiorn returned. 

Not very long afterward the ice broke up along shore with the 
opening spring and Thorbiorn and Gudrid were free to sail to 
Ericsfirth and Brattahlid, where the redoubtable ruddy Eric met 
them " with both hands " of welcome. They made their home with 
him until another could be provided on one of the nesses protruding 
like that of Heriolf . 

That autumn Leif appeared among them with his inspiring tale 
of a fruitful Wineland in the southwest and certain valued products 
to make his words good ; also with a priest and teachers to Chris- 
tianize the, people and some men whom he had rescued from a wreck 
at sea. Seldom have so many welcome sensations been presented at 
once to a people hungry for tidings. Except a minority, including 
Eric himself, Thorhall the Huntsman, and Thorstein the Swarthy of 
Lysufirth, all were in the best of mood to receive his religious message 
favorably and this work seems fully to have claimed him. His 
mother was his first convert and made his father sufficiently uncom- 
fortable. They acclaimed him " Leif the Lucky " ; and so he is 
commonly called, with great justice, to this day. 

That winter there was a great buzz and stir. Eric held out in his 
paganism with a genial scorn for novelties, and when his wife with- 
drew her countenance, he determined to withdraw himself bodily, 
and to accompany his son Thorstein, a fine specimen of a man, if not 
over successful, on a voyage of exploration to this tempting new 
country the next spring. Eric was the very leader for the voyage, 
having so thoroughly done the work along 300 miles of Greenland 
coast and through the most forbidding water gates to the deeply 



84 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

hidden pleasing dells of the inner firths. But he was thrown while 
riding to embarkation, with some disabling injuries, and gave up 
the project, averring that he saw it was not for him to discover any 
more land than the region where he stood. 

Thorstein and his party, deprived of that wise leadership, went 
sailing " cheerily out of Ericsfirth in high spirits over their plan." 
But perhaps they started too far east or held a course too much 
inclined that way ; for storms drove then into view of Iceland and 
then southward until '* the birds of Ireland " met them. After months 
of being " driven hither and thither over the sea " they returned to 
Greenland discomfited. Yet they did not fare ill. Eric greeted them 
with a relieved chuckle, which still lingers in his Stevenson-like 
words : " More cheery were we when we sailed out of Ericsfirth ; 
yet we still live ; and it might have been worse." Gudrid gave 
Thorstein the more efifective solace of her heart and hand ; going 
with him soon afterward to a new home away up at Lysufirth, a 
little below the present Godthaab. 

An epidemic visited their little community that winter and slew 
Thorstein with others. When all seemed over, the outworn young 
bride-widow went at last to lie down, but was awakened awfully 
in the blackness by a voice announcing that her dead husband had 
arisen in his bed and called for her. The messenger was his name- 
sake and joint owner, Thorstein the Swarthy, overwhelmed for the 
moment by that most hideous of Icelandic imaginings, a belief in 
the evil possession or soulless revival of corpses, making tl;iese bodies 
of loved ones the most malignant monsters. The blackness of it 
must have been on her too, and far more dreadfully, yet he saw that 
she would go notwithstanding and bade her cross herself as one 
in uncanny peril. She declared her trust in God's protective good- 
ness and went in. Then the awakening dead man, as they held him, 
greeted her lovingly, telling her many things close in her ear which 
no other heard. Soon, too, he spoke aloud for all to hear, foretelling 
great things in her behalf, as had the prophetess, charging them to 
take certain measures with a dead wizard's body for ending the 
pestilence and to carry himself and other victims to Ericsfirth for 
burial ; and in especial enjoined her not to marry a Greenlander. 
Now this significant warning, fitting so aptly her later marriage to 
an Icelander, who promptly went with her to Wineland, may be 
considered a mere coincidence or a real cause of their adventurous 
efifort or a touch of later art maintaining the harmonies. Perhaps 
the first suggestion is the least probable, but it does not greatly matter. 
Gudrid sailed back with her dead, a grim voyage down the rocky 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 85 

and icy front of Greenland. Soon afterward her father died and 
she went to live with her father-in-law Eric, who took charge for her 
of the property that she inherited and managed it well. His own 
death was not so very far away. 

That year two ships came out together from Iceland, one being 
from the eastern side, partly owned and commanded by Biarni, an 
historic figure ; the other from the western side, belonging to Thorfinn 
Karlsefni, an experienced navigator and man of affairs, notable for 
success in his undertakings. He was prosperous, too, and able to 
reinforce the supply of good things very acceptably for the Yule- 
time entertainment at Brattahlid. 

Icelanders were particular as to ancestry, and erudite in pedigree, 
although some of the ancestral nicknames of their records have a 
wild-Indian-like sound to our modern ears. Thord Horsehead, 
Thord the Yeller, Fiddle Mord, Biorn Chestbutter and an extravagant 
curiosity-shop of names developed from noses, breeches, and the like, 
seem more at home in the tepees of Rain-in-the-Face and Sitting 
Bull than as indicating eminent white men of a country which 
produced great literature. Omitting such uncouthness, Thorfinn 
Karlsefni, besides notable Danish and Norwegian lines of descent, 
had for father. Thord the son of Snorri, who was the son of Thord 
and his wife Fridgerd, daughter of Kiarval (Carroll) a "king of 
the Irish " — the active and formidable Cearbhall of Ossory contem- 
porary w^ith Alfred the Great.' We have already taken note of 
Gudrid's Gaelic descent. 

It is a curious reflection that the first recorded white American was 
partly Celtic, both paternal and maternal. Perhaps it would be 
stranger were this otherwise. Iceland was Irish and otherwise 
Celtic to a degree rarely understood. Even the brother of the first 
settler brought Irish slaves with him, who revolted, leaving their 
name to the Westmanna (Westmen, Irishmen) islands, where they 
found a temporary refuge. Others were brought in afterward at 
every stage, perhaps the most distinguished being Melkorka," the 
kidnapped daughter of another Irish " King " Kiartan (perhaps 
Cartan). She was bought by an Icelandic chief on the site of Bergen, 
Norway, passed for dumb through all the earlier years of her humilia- 
tion, but died at last, respected, in her home, the ruins of which were 
showm centuries afterward as " Melkorka-stead." Her grandson 



* Eleanor Hull : Irish Episodes of Icelandic History. Saga Book of the \'iking 
Club, vol. 3, p. 337. 
^Laxdaela Saga. Proctor's trans!., p. 2"]. 



86 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

Kiartan, named for his Irish grandfather, is the most splendid figure 
of the Laxdaela Saga. In the striking hyperbole of the ancient narra- 
tive, the Gudrun who compassed his death in resentful passion and 
jealousy wept tears in her later days which scalded the dead out of 
their graves ; for she had " done worst to him I loved best." 

Queen Aud, the widow of the Conqueror of Dublin, brought 
adherents from eastern Ireland, also from Gaelic Scotland, her 
temporary refuge — which may possibly thus have given the most 
remarkable and least Scandinavian of the Eddaic poems to Iceland, 
as suggested by a writer in the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Vigfusson ' 
takes the same view of their general origin in the eastern islands, 
but without ascribing their introduction to Queen Aud,^ and Bugge 
has presented the hypothesis again slightly modified. Her relatives 
and followers intermarried with most of the great Icelandic families 
and occupied the best lands. The names of Icelandic chieftains 
already given will be readily recognized as Irish. The greatest of 
the sagas, Nial's, contains a glowing tribute to King Brian Boru, as 
well as the most vivid account in existence of his victory at Clontarf . 
The sagas are thickly sown with Irish names and allusions ; the 
Landnamabook displays them in almost every paragraph of a long 
succession ; and one is tempted to think that by the opening of the 
eleventh century a fifth or a quarter of the Icelandic blood in all 
classes must have been Irish. 

Thorfinn and Gudrid were married at Brattahlid after the Christ- 
mas festivities following the autumn or late summer when they first 
met ; and they sailed for Wineland the next spring — probably that 
of the year 1003. 

Although her influence seems to have been most active in causing 
and furthering this expedition, she is seldom mentioned in the saga 
until her return to Iceland — once as giving birth to Snorri, again as 
perhaps left at Straumey, while her husband went back with a party 
to Hop for three months ; but a woman's part in such achievements 
could not often be spectacular nor strike a saga-man as demanding 
record. The Flateybook saga adds a picture of Gudrid beside her 
infant's cradle in her palisaded Wineland home, entertaining a 
dubious big-eyed visitor, who bore her own name and announced 
approaching danger, but was invisible to all other eyes. The Indiai. 
attack followed immediately. Reeves's index calls this visitor " Gud- 



'G. Vigfusson: Prolegomena of the Sturlunga Saga, p. 193. 
''S. Bugge: The Home of the Eddie Poems. Schofield's transl., Introduc- 
tion, p. xxiii. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 87 

rid the Skrasling woman " ; but is contradicted by the items of per- 
sonal appearance which are given. Some have suggested a white 
woman in Wineland before these Norse visitors and certainly she is 
described as having blonde hair and Icelandic apparel, but the prodi- 
gious eyes and invisibility seem rather to mark a non-human messen- 
ger of warning, proper to the fancy of the time. We are not told, 
however, that the visitation helped Gudrid or her companions in any 
way, for the warning came too late ; so perhaps the purpose, as con- 
ceived by the saga-writer, was merely to alarm, either malignantly or 
as testing her constancy of mind. Whether there were any truth in 
this story or not, the attack seems to have been real, and one of the 
many ordeals through which Gudrid had to bring her little son. She 
saw him grow to manhood in Iceland, worthily filling his father's 
place after Thorfinn died. 

It will be seen that this little Snorri Thorfinnson, probably born on 
or near Passamaquoddy Bay, is no vanishing figure of history, like 
pretty Virginia Dare, who came so much later to the lost colony of 
Roanoke, and has left us only the pathetic mystery of her fate. 
His descendants have been numerous in all succeeding centuries, 
including bishops, notable scholars, and other eminent men. 

Gudrid's later career has been touched upon. It seems that she 
made a pilgrimage to Rome and also lived for a time the life of a 
religious recluse, both according to the tenets and customs of that 
period. She was widely known also for the aid she gave to churches, 
convents, and charities. At every stage of her life we find her a 
woman of great helpfulness, power of attraction, force of character, 
and upright, kindly, unsparing effort. Let us trust that this picture 
is as true to historic fact as to the saga-writer's ideal of a noble 
feminine nature. 

12.— LEIF AND HIS VOYAGES 

Tradition gives us likewise the year looo for Leif's ^ unintended 
exploit, the finding of Wineland. The time is fixed also by the simul- 
taneous conversion of Iceland in that memorable year of " the change 
of faith." He stands a " wise and stately " figure of history, says 
Dr. Fiske, but his earlier adventures were neither exalted nor 
generous. 

Leif sailed from Greenland for Norway, perhaps early in 999, 
by the direct route, skipping Iceland — an unprecedented attempt, 



^ G. Storm : Studies on the \'ineland \'oyages. Memoircs Societe Royale des 
Antiquaires du Nord. 1888. 



88 SMITHSONIAN MISCF.LLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

which ended for the while in his being driven on the Hebrides. He 
remained there a considerable time awaiting fair winds, and " became 
enamored of a certain woman named Thorgunna," of rare intel- 
ligence. When Leif was preparing to depart Thorgunna asked to be 
permitted to accompany him. 

Leif enquired if she had in this the approval of her kinsman. She replied 
that she did not care for it. Leif responded that he did not deem it the part 
of wisdom to abduct so high-born a woman in a strange countrj-, " and we so 
few in number." " It is by no means certain that thou shalt find this to be the 
better decision " said Thorgunna. " I shall put it to the proof, notwithstand- 
ing," said Leif. [Then she notified him of their expected child, adding:] 
" And though thou give this no heed, yet will I rear the boy, and send him to 
thee in Greenland, when he shall be fit to take his place with other men. And 
I foresee that thou wilt get as much profit from this son as is thy due from 
this our parting; moreover, I mean to come to Greenland myself before the 
end comes." Leif gave her a gold finger-ring, a Greenland wadmal mantle 
and a belt of walrus-tusk. This boy came to Greenland, and was called Thor- 
gils. Leif acknowledged his paternity, and some men will have it that this 
Thorgils came to Iceland in the summer before the Froda-wonder. However, 
this Thorgils was afterwards in Greenland, and there seemed to be something 
not altogether natural about him before the end came. Leif and his com- 
panions sailed away from the Hebrides, and arrived in Norway in the autumn. 

A Thorgunna, lately arrived in Iceland, is intimately connected 
with the portents of Frodis-water in the Eyrbyggja Saga — prodigies 
and hauntings charged to her occult powxr after death, and very 
deeply impressing the popular imagination. 

Of this sorry little romance or incidental tragedy little need be 
said. But we get a glimmering view of the harrowed soul of the 
forsaken woman, which was conceived of as inflicting prodigious 
punishment even after death. 

However, having successfully left her out of the main current 
of his story, " Leif went to the court of King Olaf Tryggvason, who 
could see that Leif was a man of great accomplishments " and 
promptly converted him into a zealous Christian (Leif did not, how- 
ever, make amends) and at last committed to him the conversion of 
the other Greenlanders, at the same time that he sent the missionary 
Gizur on that errand to Iceland. 

In the following very brief passage we have our only account 
of his Wineland discovery, except the notices already quoted and 
it is most natural that inquirers should direct all side lights on 
every word of it, eager to extract the full meaning. Only we should 
beware of a strained ingenuity, the temptation to perverse original 
paradox, or a too narrow and specialized view : 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 89 

Leif put to sea when his ship was ready for the voyage. For a long time he 
was tossed about upon the ocean, and came upon lands of which he had 
previously no knowledge. There were self-sown wheat-fields and vines growmg 
there. There were also those trees which are called " mausur," and of all these 
they took specimens. Some of the timbers were so large that they were used 
in building. Leif found men upon a wreck, and took them home with him, and 
procured quarters for them all during the winter. In this wise he showed 
his nobleness and goodness, since he introduced Christianity into the country, 
and saved the men from the wreck; and he was called Leif the Lucky ever 
after. Leif landed in Ericsfirth and then went home to Brattahlid ; he was well 
received by everyone. He soon proclaimed Christianity through the land, and 
the Cathohc faith, and announced King Olaf Tryggvason's messages to the 
people, telling them how much excellence and how great glory accompanied 
the faith. 

Leif was a man with a mission now, and it held him tightly to the 
Greenland colony, which he probably never left again. If he built 
any house in Wineland, it must have been during the summer, when 
he was inspecting those " lands " with no thought of remaining, 
but in the assurance of more engrossing work elsewhere for the 
winter. In the warm months the ship itself or any temporary shelter 
would have sufficed, and if he had forgotten his duty as a vehicle of 
the faith in any futile burst of architecture, be sure the priest, ever 
at hand, would have reminded him. Presumably he did not build. 

The natural meaning of " lands " would indicate several points of 
observation along the sea front ; which seems likely with most of 
the summer ahead for gratifying a proper curiosity. Obviously he 
must have approached some part of the coast and then followed it 
one way or the other. It may be instructive to see what later navi- 
gators did on the same shore when similarly situated. Cabot and 
Hudson' with a hundred years and more between them, took the 
downward course perhaps as far as North Carolina, probably tempted 
by southern conditions, which were progressively more genial, then 
turned about northward and in the end went home. Thorfinn 
Karlsefni did the same, but apparently did not reach so low a latitude. 
We may reasonably conjecture that Leif turned southward, too. This 
supposition is fortified by the insistence of early geographers on a 
probable connection between Wineland and Africa ; by Thorfinn's evi- 
dent expectation of warmth and fertility ; by the disappointment of 
his party when the facts of Straumey fell short of the imagined 
standard ; by the adjective " Good " traditionally applied to the 
country, perhaps with the significance of blessed or supernally fortu- 



'Hakluyt: Principal Voyages (1904), vol. 7, pp. 152, 154. Also Nansen : Tn 
Northern Mists; taking John Cabot on toward Cape Cod. 



90 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

nate, and by the abundant grapes fit for wine, of which the Danish 
king" told Adam of Bremen. 

Now it becomes important to understand what manner of men 
were these enthusiastic observers of the vines and grapes. First, 
we have Leif himself, with abundant personal experience in all the 
northern countries at least, including intercourse with a king and his 
court, giving him a range of wider knowledge. Then the Icelanders 
and Greenlanders of his crew, some of whom would surely have 
traded, wandered, or served in arms in southern Europe. Theirs was 
the race that penetrated the Mediterranean to Lucca in the middle of 
the fifteenth century ; that had overrun the vineyards of France and 
looted its wine-making cities ; that later established itself as rulers 
in the two Sicilies and conquered the Canary Islands for Spain ; 
the race that had already supplied soldiers and sailors to most 
countries of Europe. Miklegard (Constantinople) "the great city,"' 
the foremost center of the world's civilization for three centuries 
thereafter, was more familiar to their minds than it is to ours, and in 
a little time their men-at-arms were to be the palace-guards of its 
emperors. Besides these, we must remember the priest and teachers, 
who joined him in Norway and who were presumably not Icelandic 
but continental European of some kind. Further along in the saga, 
we find other outland ingredients, for : 

It was when Leif was with King Olaf Tryggvason, and he made him pro- 
claim Christianity to Greenland, that the king gave him two Gaels; the man's 
name was Haki, and the woman's Haekia. The king advised Leif to have 
recourse to these people, if he should stand in need of fleetness, for they were 
swifter than deer. .... They were clad in a garment, which they called 
" kiafal," which was so fashioned, that it had a hood at the top, was open at 
the sides, was sleeveless, and was fastened between the legs with buttons and 
loops, while elsewhere they were naked. 

This afifidavit-like verbal photography and eye for costume mark 
the description as by the hand that drew Thorbiorg, yet it was 
pr.obably only the hand of a romancer. They were afterward set 
to find the grapes and wheat for Karlsefni in all their semi-nude 
picturesqueness. I have elsewhere repeatedly indicated a belief that 
this story as presented is worse than apocryphal. 

No doubt both Tyrker of the Flatey saga and this Haki have an 
aggressively mythical air. The Wineland products no doubt im- 
pressed popular fancy and may have seemed to call for special 
distinction in the matter of their finding ; but whether both or either 
of these stories be accurate, or wholly invented, or relate to matters 
of fact ill understood, they reveal a general knowledge that these early 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 9I 

crews were not all of one nation, and a sense that the discovery of 
grapes in particular would probably be made by foreigners among 
them. 

Professor Fernald ^ suggests that wild currants or more probably 
rock-cranberries and not grapes were found, awakening the wide- 
spread and long continued interest already stated. In support of 
this hypothesis, he cites Linnaeus, a better authority on botany than 
on vintages as holding " currant-wine " equal to the real article, if 
only you add a little sugar. Prof. Fernald says that rock-cranberries 
are a great treat to the birds of Labrador. He believes that the 
Norsemen, coming from Greenland, were delighted with their pro- 
fusion and went no farther. Now I do not know what sort of wine 
may be made from cranberries, but the prospect is unpleasing. It is 
true enough that beverages with hyphenated names are evolved in 
divers rural districts and old fashioned households from currants, 
elderberries, blackberries, wild cherries and the like ; and some 
people have experienced them. Every such name, for example 
gooseberry-wine, testifies to the pre-existence of real wine as a 
standard, and to the fact of feeble imitation. Are these the fruits 
from which the stout Danish king declared " the best of wine " could 
be made? Can we imagine these Icelandic broadswordsmen in 
armor growing ecstatic over the prospect of berry decoctions? 
Would it have been possible, even in later and milder days, to have 
sustained on them the *' true vinous enthusiasm " which Dr. Saints- 
bury celebrates and which roared through " the tumultuous choruses 
of Headlong Hall " ? Professor Fernald observes the phenomenon 
too much through the spectacles of the dry-leaf collector and speci- 
men man, omitting the greater part of eleventh century Norse human 
nature. These men of Greenland and Iceland were after intoxicants. 
Furthermore, the Ericsfirth region w^as a berry-country, no less than 
Labrador. Even 250 miles farther up the coast, Davis ^ found red- 
currants growing wild near the end of the sixteenth century, and 
Dr. Rink ' attests the great practical value to the inhabitants of the 
crowberry-crop in southern Greenland at the end of the nineteenth 
century. He says that the cowberries though plentiful are not eaten. It 
it not at all believable that men should sail out of one profusion of 
small fruit into another,* like in kind, but inferior and despised at 
home, and trumpet their experience abroad as something wonderful. 



^The Plants of Wineland. Rhodora, Feb. 1910. 

-The Voyages and Works of John Davis, edited by A. H. Markhain, 1880. 
='H. J. Rink: Danish Greenland, pp. 86, 88. 

* Nansen, in statingthis, seems to have confused crowberries with cowberries, 
but his argument is sound. 
7 



92 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

Nor do we find to-day any tendency among our people to confound 
berries with fox-grapes in fact or in name. The mere difference 
in size of fruit surely ought to be safeguard enough, to say nothing 
of the really preposterous contrast between the plants in the same 
regard. This grape is larger than most of the cultivated ones on 
the market, whereas currants and cowberries are but little things. 
The wild grape-vines will sometimes have a stem diameter of six 
inches and often run to the upper boughs of tall trees or overspread 
those of somewhat lesser growth with a dense canopy of verdure ; but 
we all know what currant-bushes are, and the other suggested com- 
petitors hardly equal their size. Would the old Norsemen have felt 
any close analogy between a fruit as big as a pea, growing on a small 
shrub and another as large as a pigeon's egg, hanging from a 
conspicuous feature of the woodlands? Their descendants among 
us do not seem to observe such matters differently from other people. 

Among Dr. Storm's notes there is one curious instance of a 
Nova Scotian, who referred to certain grapes as " wine-berries." 
I take this to relate to our common tart squirrel-grape, about the 
size of a Zante-currant and barely edible when quite ripe, though 
chiefly useful for jelly, and presumably capable of yielding a berry- 
wine or other dubious beverage. Dr. Storm's witnesses probably 
establish the occasional occurrence of this little wild grape in Nova 
Scotia a few years ago, if not now ; but no doubt Prof. Fernald is 
right in holding that it cannot have been plentiful. Yet, however 
abundant, it would be irrelevant. Not such were the bountiful 
grapes which King Sweyn commended to Adam of Bremen, which 
the sagas celebrated, and which Leif Ericsson first found. 

The larger wild grapes, it appears, are divided into several species 
of varying habitat in New England, nowhere passing the Bay of 
Fundy. Gomez ' may have found them on the Penobscot about 1525, 
as Champlain heard of them in 1605 on the St. John, where they 
have been made into wine in recent years,"" and reported them plentiful 
near Saco. Lescarbot,^ who was with him, corroborates this, declar- 
ing that they grew as large as plums at Richmond Island ; but he 
relates a projected experiment of their apothecary to introduce grape 



' S. E. Dawson: The St. Lawrence, its Basin, p. 102. 

'•^ Haliburton : A Search for Lost Colonies. Pop. Sci. Mo., vol. 26, p. 40. 

^M. Lescarbot : Nova Francia. Erondelle's transl., pp. 93, loi. I have mis- 
taken one of our small wild plums for such a grape, the tree and vine being 
neighbors. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 93 

vines from southern New England and plant them at Port Royal. 
Nova Scotia, where they did not grow.' 

Strachey ^ celebrated these grapes in the same vein as the King of 
Denmark, but more voluminously, during the time of Powhatan's 
confederacy, " the Queen of Portobaco," " the Emperor of the 
Nanticokes" and "the laughing King of Accomac." He writes: 

It would surely raise a well-stayed judgment into wonder (as Sir Thomas 
Dale hath writ sometime unto his majesty's counsel here for Virginia) to 
behold the goodly vines burthening every neighbor bush and climbing the tops 
of highest trees and these full of clusters of grapes in their kind, however 
draped and shaded soever from the sun and though never pruned nor manured. 
I dare say it that we have eaten there as full and luscious a grape as in the 
villages hetzveen Paris and Amiens and have drunk often of the rath wine zvhich 
Dr. Bohune and other of our people have made full as good as your French 
British zvines. Twenty gallons at one time have sometimes been made, without 
any other help than crushing the grapes in the hand, which letting to settle five 
or six days hath in the drawing forth proved strong and heady. 

This would seem to dispose of Dr. Nansen's suggestion that Leif 
and others had neither appliances nor leisure for wine-making. 

Possibly, like the Norsemen, the Virginians overrated this vintage. 
It is more to the purpose to note the effect of these wine-yielding 
wild-grapes on the minds of early explorers and colonizers ; and that, 
with so many centuries between them, both apply the same praise 
to the same thing. " Strong and heady " no doubt had much to do 
with the excellence ascribed. 

These grapes are especially important to our present research, not 
only because they gave North America its first name (unless we 
except the more dubious Great Ireland) but because they are our 
best clew to one of the " lands " that Leif discovered. Being first 
or last where fox grapes were abundant, he must have reached 
southern New England at least, more likely New Jersey, or even the 
regions about the Chesapeake. Remembering Cabot and Hudson 



*Leif's crew, like our people of the District of Columbia and neighboring 
states, doubtless did not discriminate, except between the small berry-like kind 
(which would not be highly valued where better berries were plentiful) 
and the large kind, good for table- fruit and for wine. We call the latter 
"fox grapes." I have picked and eaten them on a low island of the Anacostia 
near Benning's bridge, and only a few feet from a great bed of wild rice, a 
spot probably within the limits of Washington City. More commonly they 
occur on our hills. A few years ago a great number were gathered near the 
Conduit Road for our household use. Civilization clears them away; yet I 
have found them, both green and ripe, near the lower reservoir in a dense 
thicket on two occasions in August, 191 1. 

^W. Strachey: The Historic of Travaile into Virginia, p. 120. 



94 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

and the reference to " Africa," my own probable limit for him would 
be more southerly even than Norfolk, though it is all conjecture. 
Juul Dieserud was perhaps the first writer to point out the probability 
that Leif had gone farther south than Thorfinn, though Moulton's 
History of New York had carried Thorvald to Manhattan or beyond 
it. The account of the shore westward beyond Leif's-booths in the 
Thorvald section of the Flateybook saga undoubtedly suggests the 
outer face of Long Island, N. Y., or some like low strand — possibly 
a reminiscence of Leif's earlier cursory visit to the coast. 

Of course we must not forget that the range of a plant may change 
with time, a lowering or rising of the average temperature being 
an important factor in determining this. Indeed, in the case of the 
squirrel-grape a withdrawal from Nova Scotia seems to have really 
occurred within a hundred years. But the disappearance may be 
due to their sparseness and to human interference in clearing ground, 
rather than to a very few feet of crustal uplift or other change in 
conditions. During the previous 800 years, man would not be a 
factor, for the Indians of the region were not agricultural nor likely 
to work, except in fishing and hunting, beyond the absolute needs 
of their canoes and camp-fires. The seasons, too, during Ihe last 
300 years appear pretty constant in quality, except where modified a 
little by shearing off the forests. The few weather hints of the 
earlier Norse sagas tell the same story of relative temperature north 
and south, although the upper border of the grape-belt may have 
receded a little. 

One might fancy that the increasing severity in Greenland's 
climate, which Ivar Bardsen noted about midway between our time 
and that of Eric the Red (though Dr. Nansen doubts it) , would neces- 
sarily be repeated along our coast from Labrador to Cape Ann, by 
reason of the augmented volume and coldness of the southward- 
running Arctic current. But the problem is not so simple, for a mild 
Greenland season has been found to make a chill one in Labrador, 
as Dr. Fiske ^ has noted, by loosening a greater mass of ice from its 
moorings to float southward. On the whole, we may more safely 
assume approximately the same climate as at present and the same 
area of abundance for fox-grapes in the year looo until we have some 
proof of change. 

The "wild wheat " of the saga will be dealt with more fully in 
a later chapter. If construed as " strand oats," for example by 
Prof. Fernald, it clearly contradicts the statements about grapes 



' The Discovery of America. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 95 

and vines and excellent wine, since it confines us to northern regions 
which they cannot reach. If it means Zea mays, our ordinary " corn," 
as believed by Rafn and Fiske, it can add nothing-, for the maize 
limits and fox grape limits were nearly identical on the northeast, and 
both extended southward far beyond any probable voyage of Leif . If, 
as appears most likely, wild rice {Zizania aqttatica) be intended, our 
case for local identification is only a little better. This rice grows 
plentifully all the way from Texas to the coast mountains of Maine ; 
it is so plentiful in Maryland as to be the dominant feature of river 
landscape in the tidewater region ; it thrives near Boston and Provi- 
dence. Indeed, Cartier's attention in 1535 was attracted to it (as ble 
sauvage) on the southern shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. As 
already stated he says it is like rye, and plainly distinguishes between 
it and maize, which he first saw soon afterward, Leif might have 
found wild rice at intervals anywhere below the Kennebec. 

The statement that some of the timbers were large enough to be 
used for building may seem to imply a lightly timbered region, but 
Leif merely took " specimens," and the word " some " doubtless 
relates to this little miscellaneous collection and not to the general 
forestry of Wineland or Markland. The use referred to would prob- 
ably be at Brattahlid, or at least under the direction of Eric,^ whose 
ideas on such subjects were massive, as we gather from the hundred- 
cubic-feet dimensions of his house-wall stones. Growing trees of any 
reasonable bulk and height might readily have been found within the 
limits of the present Maritime Provinces ; and Newfoundland must 
have been mainly a forest, as were most of the seaboard regions below. 

There has been much discussion over the puzzling " mausur wood." 
Rafn thought it especially indicated " bird's-eye maple," found on 
Marthas Vineyard and elsewhere. This is probably our most beauti- 
ful native wood, having a delicate wavy and dotted grain. Prof. 
Fernald in his Rhodora article identifies mausur positively with 
" canoe birch." In Scandinavia some kind of birch must have been 
most often the source of this ornamental carving wood, for birches 
are the most plentiful hardwood trees of northern countries. Yet 
on Grand Manan, where the white birch is everywhere in evidence, 
the comparatively few maples would more readily yield a large 
specimen ; and knotty parts are to be found in either. That " a 
veined wood," irrespective of species, is the real meaning appears from 
the following words of said article : " Similar growths have sometimes 
been found on the maple, horse-chestnut, cherry and aspen, and haz'e 



^ H. J. Rink : Danish Greenland. Stated as 6 feet by 4 and "of like thickness." 



96 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

sometimes been put to similar use." It is hard to believe that any 
birch, however contorted in grain, can equal bird's-eye maple ; but 
no doubt these practical lovers of beautiful things were in no way 
concerned as to whether it were one or the other, provided it answered 
their reqviirements. They would classify by ornamental effect, and 
name it according to their classifying. But even if we were to accept 
canoe birch as the true and only " mausur," Leif might still have 
obtained it almost anywhere from Long Island to Nova Scotia. 
Besides, we do not know that he cut his prize in the same " land " 
where he gathered grapes. He visited " lands " and brought home 
these specimens ; that is all. 

We have no further clue. He touched a country of warmth and 
plenty, where wild fox-grapes abounded. The other products which 
he found were proper to that territory, although they may have 
been picked up beyond it. From allusions later in the saga, and 
statements elsewhere, we learn that he named this region Wineland, 
but not necessarily w^ith an}- reference to goodness or blessedness 
except so far as he may have held wine to be good and blest. 

Dr. Nansen discredits this achievement of Leif, though accepting 
the saga's previous statement that he sailed from Greenland directly 
to the Hebrides and Norway, and applauding it as among the greatest 
of nautical exploits. But surely this bold navigator would be the 
very man to attempt a repetition of the feat, sailing the other way ; 
and what could be more natural than his storm-driven landfall on an 
unexpected shore? We do not need to go into mythology or folk- 
tales for precedents ; such incidents are there also because they first 
happened to men in reality ; and they keep on happening. When that 
which began as fact occurs as fact again, it cannot reasonably be 
impeached by any intervening or parallel play of fancy. 

Leif's items are meager, but so far as they go they are absolutely 
corroborative. Evidently someone visited our coast somewhere 
between Casco Bay and the Chesapeake, touching also at Newfound- 
land and Labrador. Whether the voyager were Leif, or Biarni, or 
another may not be practically important, but Leif is named as 
discoverer in the best accredited saga, and we may as well adhere 
to him until a more plausible candidate is found. 

13.— WITH THORFINN AND GUDRID TO THE BAY 
OF FUNDY 

A glance at a map of these regions shows two methods of approach 
to mainland America from southern Greenland — the direct route over 
sea and the slow but nearlv safe and sure northwestern journev along 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 9/ 

the Greenland coast to the region where the shores bend toward each 
Other near Davis Strait ; followed by a dash southward or southwest- 
ward. The former aims immediately at habitable regions and pleasant 
surroundings ; it is shorter and naturally tempted men ; but it tempted 
the rage of the Atlantic also, which has usually been active near the 
Newfoundland banks and above them, providing a dangerous trap for 
mariners who had to guess at direction since they carried no compass. 
It sent Thorstein, through great trouble and hardship, all over the 
sea to no purpose. Very likely it sent Bishop Eric and his companions 
to the bottom, destroying with them all hope of a Christianized and 
organized Wineland. 

Thorfinn Karlsefni, though an enterprising man, probably owed 
his especial reputation for success to his very great care in making 
sure. Like all such, he had the wit to profit by the mistakes of 
others. He was a seasoned navigator who had thus far avoided 
mishap, through knowing how to humor the northern seas. More- 
over, in Red Eric he had the counsel of the foremost explorer in the 
world, who must have pondered long on the causes of his son 
Thorstein's failure and the best way to avoid its repetition in trying 
again. If he had not seen — as already suggested — the main Ameri- 
can shore opposite Greenland in the course of his first very thorough 
three years' explorations, his indomitable wilderness-rangers like 
Thorhall the hunter, must surely have been frequently up about the 
straits and would be charged season after season to bring him infor- 
mation. So active a mind as Eric's anchored physically by increasing 
years and injuries, could not fail to busy itself especially with the 
geography of the lands beyond that water and their relation to those 
which Leif had seen. The coming of driftwood to him from some un- 
known quarter would be a continual reminder and incitement. Thor- 
stein was dead, Leif was immersed in aggressive Christianity; in his 
brilliant daughter-in-law Gudrid, her husband and Leif-s brother, 
Thorvald, Eric the explorer would naturally see the best hope of sub- 
stituting success for failure. 

Thorfinn's actual route is carefully given. It was from Ericsfirth 
to Gudrid's former home near Lysufirth in the smaller settlement ; 
about five degrees farther west and a long distance above the junction 
of the western water with the Atlantic. Next they went to " Bear- 
Island," according to the Saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni, or " the Bear 
Islands," according to the Saga of Eric the Red, wdiich is generally 
the safer guide where details differ. No doubt Disco was called 
"Bear-Island" (Biarney), as Graah,' the first official explorer of 



'Exploration of the East Coast of Greenland, before cited. 



98 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

Eastern Greenland, pointed out nearly a century ago. But this was a 
common name, readily applied ; indeed our narrative presents later 
another and very distant Biarney. Disco is unreasonably far north, 
involving unnecessary struggles with icy currents ; and the flight from 
it could hardly have been made in the time given by the sagas, though 
perhaps this item need not be insisted on. An island,^ off Baffin-land, 
on the American shore has been suggested, bidding us assume not 
only that this coast had been seen, as it may have been, but that it had 
grown familiar enough for recognized nomenclature in details. We 
have no warrant to go so far. A more moderate conjecture points to 
the Greenland islands near the present Godthaab, where Davis was 
attacked by Eskimo nearly six centuries afterward. They would make 
a good taking-off point. It was only necessary to await a strong 
steady wind from the north. Having this behind them, like migratory 
birds of long travel, Karlsefni and his company sped down " south- 
ward," or a little west of southward, on their way. 

One hundred and sixty men and several women besides Gudrid went 
with him — perhaps children, too, as did Snorri in returning — for 
families took all manner of chances in those reckless days. " All 
kinds of live stock " owned by Greenlanders accompanied these 
colonists in three, or possibly four, large vessels. Clearly they 
intended permanent settlement. 

We must not call them viking-ships, which never sailed out of 
Iceland or Greenland ; though Dr. Fiske ' inadvertently styles Eric 
the Red " a viking," in praising his explorations, and Colonel Higgin- 
son ^ devotes much space to an account of Norse marauders, to make 
us acquainted with the people who tried at great risk and through 
much hardship to settle America. The only enlightenment is col- 
lateral, and the general effect is misleading. 

Such utterances grow out of a confusion like that between sea-king 
and viking, which gives the first syllable of the latter its broad current 
mispronunciation. Three types must be distinguished : the sea-king, 
the viking and the settled man of the north who created what 
prosperity was going and offered the best hope for the future. The 
first — for example Olaf the White Queen Aud's husband — made 
conquests by his navy, and diff'ered from other navy-wielders only in 



'J. T. Smith: The Discovery of America by the Norsemen in the Tenth 
Century. Also the Minn. Hist. Soc. Report, already cited p. 13. (His map 
with additions.) 

*The Discovery of America. 

^Higginson and MacDonald : History of the United States. Ed. 1905, pp. 
25 et seq. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 99 

being less definitely anchored politically and more ready to drop 
.anchor permanently abroad. The second was a predatory son of the 
vik or fiord (as his name tells us) in which he had his den, and whence 
he issued, to pounce on passing ships or harry the farmers along the 
shore. 

If these things were done far afield, men counted them acts of war 
against the outer world and the perpetrators were considered heroes. 
Many generally commendable Scandinavians engaged in them. Some- 
times even formidable associations were organized, to more efficiently 
exploit this wide opportunity. But excitement and yet more the 
prospect of booty were at the bottom of it all. In proportion as the 
achievements occurred nearer home, they were regarded with more 
disfavor. Especially was this true in that northern island which was 
colonized by picked men choosing exile rather than submission, whose 
natures also were modified from the beginning by other blood of 
more ripe and gracious culture. The home-raider was held not 
wholly admirable in Norway ; he became in Iceland (see Landnama) 
*' the most wrongful of men " and " a viking and a scoundrel." Just 
so, Ospak ^ of the northern Ere and his merry men, owned a lieuten- 
ant, one Raven, adequately stigmatized in another great saga as " by 
named the viking, he was nought but an evil doer." There is no com- 
promise in the characterization of such folk by the early heroic litera- 
ture. The teaching is often by example rather than precept, by dra- 
matic exhibition rather than denunciation ; but we are expected to feel 
that the boiling alive ^ of professional bullies might be overlooked, if 
not applauded, and that almost the very worst type of man was he 
who brutally afflicted his neighbors, and thus acquired their wives 
and goods. To the Icelander, if there were one kind of robberbully 
more intolerable than another, it was the local amphibious viking. 
Rather early in the prosperity of the island, it necessarily made an 
end of him. But that " viking " should be anything but a synonym 
for aquatic hero in these northern lands hardly seems to have sug- 
gested itself to most English-writing historians. The sea-king and 
the viking were the greater nuisance and the less of their period ; but 
there was this to be said for the former, that he revived in some 
form the order which he overturned and often was a factor in improve- 
ment, whereas the viking was merely destructive, except in his own 
home or within the limits of his predatory association. 



^The Eyrbyggja Saga, Morris and Magnusson'stransl., pp. 164. 291. Notes. 
''Eyrbyggja Saga, p. 70. 



lOO SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

The normal Norseman, of whom we hear less, was a good man at 
arms, under penalty of losing all ; too ready, no doubt, to obey the 
battle summons even in the neighborhood or family quarrels ; but less 
a soldier than a trader, a farmer, a fisherman or something of all 
three, as well as a curious traveler abroad. At heart he was anything 
but a pirate. The habit of industry was almost curiously dominant in 
all classes and exhibited in the most artless, vmpretending way. 
The great chief and champion Gunnar is discovered sowing grain with 
his own hands in the crisis of his fate ; at Bolli's command, his wife 
Gudrun goes out of the dairy, where murder is to leap on him, and 
providently washes clothes in the brook during that tragedy ; the 
vengeance of Bardi falls on Gisli and his companions while their 
scythes are asway in the field ; Hallgerda's first husband is killed, by 
her contrivance, over a quarrel as to whether he or another can best 
handle codfish ; and the whole troop of Flosi the Burner postpone one 
of the most notable recorded instances of Norse vengeance until they 
have properly completed the haying. The old time Icelander was a 
very practical, if a very belligerent and litigious, hero, with genuine 
honesty as he saw it, and a real intention to be law-abiding in the main, 
though abiding a most topsy-turvy kind of law. 

Yet, while not a viking, he might have as good ships or better. 
Such were the " dragons " or " serpents," built for dangerous hazards 
and important missions, for withstanding the worst onset of the ele- 
ments — at need for hand to hand boarding with sword and axe and 
spear, also for the most effective pursuit or escape. 

Of course they were not the only kind. A rather clumsy and 
dilatory craft ^ was in use more or less for ordinary trading purposes. 
Its modern representative was pointed out to Professor Packard ' 
by a Norwegian, and taken as an approximate standard in the sailing 
calculations of the former for the time needed in the passage between 
Newfoundland and Greenland across the dreaded Ginnungagap. 
But one of the exploring vessels had already borne Thorbiorn and 
Gudrid with their fortunes to Greenland, when a dismal death, or 
life, honor and prosperity, were in the cast of a die, and all that he 
owned had gone to the venture ; a second was Thorfinn's own ; a third 
belonged to Biarni, a chivalric chieftain of the highest personal pride 
and most exacting followers. Such craft would more likely be of the 
dragon or serpent pattern, beautiful open ships " which were probably 
stronger and more seaworthv and certainlv much swifter than the 



' Heimskringla. Laing's transl., vol. i, p. 441. 
*A. S. Packard: The Labrador Coast, pp. 24, 26. 




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NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK lOI 

Spanish vessels of the time of Cohimbus." Laing ^ gives similar 
testimony. One of the largest on record was King Olaf's Great 
Serpent, a hundred and fifty feet in the keel. 

Colonel Higginson " has described this type, from a fine specimen 
yielded up nearly intact by the northern sands. I quote only a little : 

She was seventy-seven feet eleven inches at the greatest length and sixteen 
feet eleven inches at the greatest width .... and would draw less than four feet 

of water As a whole this disinterred vessel proved to be anything but the 

rude and primitive craft which might have been expected. It was neatly built 
and well preserved, constructed on what a sailor would call beautiful lines and 

eminently fitted for sea-service Manj^ such vessels may be found depicted 

on the celebrated Bayeux tapestry This was not one of the very largest 

ships, for some of them had thirty oars on each side (instead of its sixteen) 

and vessels carrying from twenty to twenty-five were not uncommon 

Probably the sail was much like those still carried by large open boats in that 
country, a single square on a mast forty feet long. 

Thus equipped, Thorfinn could go quite literally on the wings of 
the wind. Henceforward, at least as far as the Bay of Fundy, we 
have the benefit of their log and sailing directions. Leif has given 
us no such aid, but there was no such motive in his case. He had 
stumbled on his great good fortune, and probably acted mainly from 
impulse in skirting the shore awhile, and touching here and there for 
specimens, before hurrying home to evangelize Greenland. Thorfinn, 
however, aimed at permanency, and it was most important to note 
closely the route which must be retraced in sending tidings and 
establishing communication with the parent colony, and which all 
reinforcements must follow. It is plain sailing in the saga as in 
reality, with merely some uncertainty as to the exact intervals of time 
and distance intended. In that the swiftness of the wind-driven 
ships of course must be considered. 

The saga tells us : 

Thence they sailed away beyond the Bear Isles with northerly winds. They 
were out two doegr ; then they discovered land, and rowed thither in boats, 
and explored the country, and found there many flat stones [hellur], so large, 
that two men could well spurn soles upon them [i. e., lie at full length upon 
them sole to sole] ; there were many Arctic foxes there. They gave a name 
to the country and called it Helluland. 

Thence they sailed two " doegr," and bore away from the south toward the 
south-east and they found a wooded country and on it many animals ; an island 
lay there off the land toward the south-east; they killed a bear on this, and 
called it afterwards Biarney [Bear Isle] ; but the country Markland [Forest- 
land]. When two "doegr" had elapsed, they descried land, and they sailed 
off this land ; there was a cape [ness] to which they came. They beat into the 
wind along this coast, having the land upon the starboard [right] side. This 



' Heimskringla, Laing's Introduction, vol. i. p. 160. 

^Higginson and MacDonald : History of the United States Ed. 1905, pp. 
30 et seq. 



102 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

was a bleak coast, with long and sandy shores. They went ashore in boats, 
and found the keel of a ship, so they called it Keelness there ; they likewise 
gave a name to the strands and called them Furdustrandir (Wonder Strands), 
because they were so long to sail by. Then the country became ^ fiord-cut and 
they steered their ships into a bay.^ 

Here the interpolated unauthentic episode of Haki and Haskia 
occurs. " One of them carried in the hand a bunch of grapes, the other 
wheat selfsown. Karlsefni said they seemed to have found goodly 
indigenous products." The original narrative proceeds, beginning 
with a repetition which is enough of itself to show the break made 
by the foreign matter : 

Karlsefni and his followers held on their way, until they came where the 
coast was fiord-cut (or indented with bays). They stood into a bay with their 
ships. There was an island out at the mouth of the bay, about which there 
were strong currents, wherefore they called it Straumey [stream island]. 
There were so many eider ducks ["' birds," Thorfinn Karlsefni] ' on the island 
that it was scarcely possible to walk for the eggs. They sailed through the 
firth, and called it Straumfiord [stream firth] and carried their cargoes ashore 

from the ships, and established themselves there There were mountains 

there and the country round about was fair to look upon. They did nought 
but explore the country. There was tall grass there. They remained there 
during the winter, and they had a hard winter, for which they had not pre- 
pared, and they grew short of food, and the fishing fell off. Then they went 
out to the island, in the hope that something might be forthcoming in the way 
of fishing or flotsam. There was little food left, however, although their live- 
stock fared well there [i. e., on the island]. Then they invoked God, that he 
might send them food, but they did not get response so soon as they needed. 
Thorhall disappeared. They searched for him three half days and on the 
fourth day Karlsefni and Biarni found him on a projecting crag [note, of the 
island]. He was lying there and looking up at the sky, with his eyes, nostrils 
and mouth wide-stretched, and was scratching himself, and muttering some- 
thing. They asked him why he had gone thither; he replied that it did not 
concern any one; he told them not to be surprised at this; adding that he had 
lived sufficiently long to render it unnecessary for them to take counsel for 
him. They asked him then to go home with them and he did so. Soon after 
this a whale appeared there, and they went to it, and flensed it, and no one 
could tell what manner of whale it was. Karlsefni had much knowledge of 
whales, but he did not know this one. When the cooks had prepared it, they 
ate of it, and were all made ill by it. Then Thorhall, approaching them, says : 
"Did not the Red-beard prove more helpful than your Christ? This is my 



' Olson substitutes "fiord-cut," as more exact, for Reeves' "indented with 
bays." 
*A. M. Reeves: The Finding of Wineland the Good, pp. 42-43- 
^Compare Bird Island of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where Packard in 1864 
found the whole top white with nesting birds. In i860 about 50,000 pairs of 
gannets nested there, 5,000 in 1874; 50 in 1882, and their nests had been rifled 
when found. Funk Island off Newfoundland on the Atlantic side was also 
often called Bird Island for like reasons. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK IO3 

reward for the verses which I composed to Thor the Trustworthy; seldom 
has he failed me " ; and when the people knew this, none of them would eat, 
and they cast [it] down over the rocks, and invoked God's mercy. The 
weather then improved, and they were able to row out to fish, and they had 
no longer any lack of the necessities of life. In the spring they went into 
Straumfirth and obtained provisions from both regions, hunting on the main- 
land, gathering eggs, and deep-sea fishing. 

Now they took counsel together concerning their expedition, and came to 
an agreement. Thorhall the Huntsman wished to go northward around Won- 
derstrands and past Keelness, and to seek Wineland ; while Karlsefni wished to 
proceed southward along the land and to the eastward, believing that country to 
be greater, which is farther to the southward, and it seemed to him more advis- 
able to explore both. Thorhall prepared for his voyage out below the island, 
having only nine men in his party, for all of the remainder of his company 
went with Karlsefni. 

Of this picturesque dissentient and minority-leader we hear earher 
in the saga : 

Thorhall was called the Huntsman ; he had long lived with Eric, engaging in 
fishing and hunting expeditions during the summer, and had many things under 
his charge. Thorhall was a man of great stature, swart and giant-like; he 
was rather stricken with years, overbearing in manner, taciturn, and usually a 
man of few words, underhanded in his dealings, and yet given to offensive 
language, and always ready to stir up evil ; he had given little heed to the true 
faith after its introduction into Greenland. Thorhall was not very popular, 
but Eric had long been accustomed to seek his advice. He was in the same ship 
with Thorvald and his companions because he had extensive knowledge of the 
uninhabited regions. 

Continuing the narrative : 

And one day when Thorhall was carrying water aboard the ship, and was 
drinking, he recited this ditty : ^ 

'■ When I came, these brave men told me. 
Here the best of drink I'd get, 
Now with water-pail behold me, — 

Wine and I are strangers yet. 
Stooping at the spring, I've tested 

All the wine this land affords ; 

Of its vaunted charms divested, 

Poor indeed are its rewards." 

Then they put to sea and Karlsefni accompanies them out off the island. 
Before they hoisted sail, Thorhall recited this ditty : 
" Comrades, let us now be faring 
Homeward to our own again ! 
Let us try the sea-steed's daring. 
Give the chafing courser rein. 
Those who will may bide in quiet, 
Let them praise their chosen land, 
Fasting on a whale-steak diet. 

In their home of Wonder-strand." 



A. M. Reeves: The Finding of Wineland the Good. 



104 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

Then he " sailed away to the northward past Wonderstrands and 
Keelness, intending to cruise to the westward around that cape." No 
more was heard of him, until, after their return to Iceland, traders 
brought word that he had been enslaved in Ireland, where he is said 
to have died. Storms were given the credit of causing this unex- 
pected and rather prodigious and disastrous journey; but perhaps he 
had taken the opportunity to withdraw with a ship from westward 
lands altogether. 

To ofifset this defection, the baby Snorri had arrived as a little 
reinforcement, his birth-place being apparently the shore of the 
bay behind Straumey, before they moved out to that island in the 
winter : for we are told later that " Snorri, Karlsefni's son was 
born the first autumn and was three winters old when they (finally) 
went away." He may have been about six months old when the party 
divided, and " Karlsefni cruised southward off the coast with Snorri 
and Biarni and their people." 

No doubt there was hope of establishing their home permanently 
in some spot which would better fulfill the expectations aroused by 
Leif. The absence lasted however, only a year ; making an episode 
presenting so many special problems that it must be treated separately. 

Returning from this southern sojourn : 

They now arrived again at Streamfirth where they found great abundance 
of all those things of which they stood in need. Some men say, that Biarni 
and Gudrid remained behind there with a hundred men, and went no further ; 
while Karlsefni and Snorri proceeded to the southward with forty men, tarry- 
ing at Hop barely two months and returning again the same summer. Karl- 
sefni then set out with one ship, in search of Thorhall and Huntsman, but the 
greater part of the company remained behind. They sailed to the northward 
around Keelness, and then bore to the westward, having land to the larboard 
[left]. There were wooded wildernesses there; and when they had journeyed 
a considerable distance, a river flowed down from the east toward the w(?st. 
They sailed into the mouth of the river, and lay to by the southern bank. 

It happened one morning, that Karlsefni and his companions discovered in an 
open space in the woods above them, a speck, which seemed to shine toward 
them, and they shouted at it: it stirred, and it was a Uniped^ [onefooter], 
who skipped down to the bank of the river by which they were lying. Thor- 
vald, a son of Eric the Red, was sitting at the helm, and the Uniped shot an 
arrow into his inwards. Thorvald drew out the arrow and exclaimed: "There 
is fat around my paunch ; we have hit upon a fruitful country, and yet we are 



^ Nansen : In Northern Mists; contains a picture of a harmless-looking one 
copied from the well-known Hereford map. The fancy may have come from 
the south ; but Norsemen were ready to see Unipeds even in Scandinavia on 
slight provocation — much more on an inner shore of a land of mystery and 
dread. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK IO5 

not likely to get much profit of it." Thorvald died soon after from his wound. 
Then the Uniped ran away back toward the north. Karlsefni and his men 
pursued him, and saw him from time to time and it seemed as if he were 
trying to escape. The last they saw of him, he ran down into a creek. Then 
they turned back; whereupon one of the men recited this ditty: 

" Eager, our men, up hill down dell, 
Hunted a Uniped ; 
Hearken, Karlsefni, while they tell 
How swift the quarry fled ! " 

Then they sailed away back toward the north, and believed they had got 
sight of the land of the Unipeds ; nor were they disposed to risk the lives of 
their men any longer. They concluded that the mountains of Hop, and those 
which they had now found, formed one chain, and this appeared to be so 
because they were about an equal distance removed from Straumfiord in either 
direction. They intended to explore all the mountains, those which were at 
Hop and those which they discovered. They sailed back and passed the third 
winter at Straumfiord. 

Then the men began to grow quarrelsome, of which the women were the 
cause; and those who were without wives, endeavored to seize upon the wives 
of those who were married, whence the greatest trouble arose. 

When they sailed away from Wineland, they had a southerly wind, and so 
came upon Markland, where they found five Skrellings, of whom one was 
bearded, two were women, and two were children. Karlsefni and his people 
took the boys, but the others escaped, and these Skrellings sank down into the 
earth. They bore the lads away with them, and taught them to speak, and 
they were baptized. They said, that their mother's name was Vaetilldi, and 
their father's Uvasgi. They said, that kings governed the land of the Skrel- 
lings, one of whom was called Avalldamon, and the other Valldidida. They 
stated, that there were no houses there, and that the people lived in caves 
or holes. 

Then follows the information before mentioned about a possible 
Ireland the Great ; also the statement of their return to Greenland ; 
where they passed the winter, going on to Iceland the next season. 

The httle epic pendant of Biarni's death, the experience of Gudrid 
with her mother-in-law, and the genealogy of " Herra Hauk the 
Lawman " end the saga. 

Dr. Nansen has noticed the insertion of The Gaelic Rtmners 
episode in the wrong place, but apparently misses the significance 
of the words about entering a bay which precede and follow it. Evi- 
dently there was but one bay, repeated by the interpolator to keep up 
the story or in mere carelessness. These were intending settlers 
guided by Eric's advice and plan of penetrating deep inlets and estab- 
lishing themselves in fertile, ample, grassy borders. Passamaquoddy 
Bay, just beyond Grand Manan, would be the first to tempt them one 
would say. 



I06 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

14.— THEIR WINELAND VOYAGE INTERPRETED 

Some romantic matter concerning Thorhall, Thorvald, and Mark- 
land — which may well be quite true in substance yet should not be 
treated as historic — has been given above, not only because it is 
threaded on the very coherent and sensible explorers' narrative in the 
saga and has a certain literary interest, but because of its helpful data. 

We see that this narrative deals with wid6 intervals, great areas, 
impressive features of the coast, and prodigious phenomena, ignoring 
minor items, except for identification or incidental entertainment. 
Again, wherever the explorers follow the coast for any great distance, 
its notable characteristics are carefully given ; so, when these do not 
appear, we may be sure they sailed out of clear sight of land. 

We may find something artificial in the periodicity of the " two 
doegr " interval, once repeated in the Saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni, 
twice in the more precise companion Saga of Eric the Red ; and 
undoubtedly such conventional divisions are a stock property of old 
sea-exploring tales. Thus there are three periods in the outward 
voyage of Edrisi's ^ Magrurin, first about eleven days, then twelve, 
and then twelve again. But in tracing a coast for suitable settlement 
sites, a periodical inspection might be planned from the outset for the 
earlier part of the work by way of saving time, and to keep the 
record brief, as it should be if in runic characters. This plan would 
answer very well until they should reach habitable country, which 
would require to be examined more minutely ; and, in point of fact, 
we hear no more of the " doegr " after the landing at Keelness. 
It will not do to say that every statement of regularly divided human 
undertaking is untrue because regular divisions occur also in stories 
mainly fanciful. Thorfinn comes before us as a wary, systematic, and 
successful personage, and the method here indicated seems quite in 
character. The parallel with myths and folk-tales has little value, 
except where the events narrated and divided are clearly fortuitous. 

Newfoundland cannot be Helluland (as some used to think) for 
several reasons ; in particular, it is not severe, bare, and stony enough, 
and has far too few Arctic foxes. Prof. Packard,' who had 
scientifically studied these regions, declares for the eastern face of 
Labrador, perhaps " near Cape Harrison or along the coast to the 
northward." Sir Clements Markham,^ another and very competent 



' Edrisi : Geographie. Jaubert's transl., vol. 2, p. 27. 

^The Labrador Coast, p. 11. 

^Remarks on Dr. Nanson's paper. London Geogr. Journ., Dec. 191 1. 




*ll- •/j afterward called Cor nu 
du Gallia) i 

^^THE W0NDERSTRAND5 

FioSerstrandir) 



MAP 
HopLBay) ILLUSTRATING 
THORFINN KARLSEFNl's EXPEDITION 

ABOUT A D- I003 TO 1006 

-^=- Thorf inns route from Brattshlid to Straumey. 
.-■!:=-Thorf inn's route around NovaScotiaand Cape 

Breton Island to mouth of western f lowingriver 
,o:rr-Thorfinn'5 route to Hop (as conjectured) 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BADCOCK IO7 

eye-witness ; ^ Dr. Grenfell, who has spent most of his hfe in humane 
service along that shore ; Mr. W. S. Wallace, his historical coadjutor 
and Dr. Storm.' reasoning from totally different experience and data, 
all take the same view, but with less local exactness. It is needless to 
add further corroboration. Helluland w^as Labrador, although it may 
have been first seen in the stretch between Hopedale and Nain. 

From the islands near Godthaab to a point slightly below Nain 
may be 450 miles. The assumed impossibility of Thorfinn's making 
the crossing in the time stated (probably 48 hours for open sea-sail- 
ing like this) led Mr. Reeves to suggest a copyist's error, substituting 
" two " for seven. But this is purely hypothetical, involves a really 
prodigious time-allowance and would call for too much later repeti- 
tion of verbal errors, as well as too great length for the entire journey. 

It may be well to see what has been actually recorded in more 
recent times. A writer on long distance lake-racing in " Yachting," 
for June, 1910, page 407, cites the " \'encidor " as making 331 miles 
in 34 hours, with wind astern or nearly so, a third of the distance 
being " through rockstrewn channels, where reefs and islands furnish 
continually shifting currents and high shores give baffling slants of 
wind." This is nearly at the rate of ten miles an hour, and perhaps 
we may fairly suppose twelve or more for the two-thirds of open 
water. Again, on the Atlantic between Nassau and Havana, we 
learn : ^ " The ' America ' logged a distance of 400 miles in 40 hours, 
260 of which was made in the first twenty-four hours." This seems 
a reasonably fair comparison, the voyage being in about the same 
direction as Thorfinn's and for only a little less distance, though in 
much more southern latitudes. No doubt the difference between the 
distance made in the first day and that in the second is to be explained 
by some change either in the course or the wind. We are given to 
understand that there was neither in the Norsemen's case. 

Now this schooner-yacht " America " was beaten by " the big 
sloop ' Maria,' " which " walked away from her " * in sea-sailing before 
the wind, and we are assured by the same work that this feat would 
probably have been repeated as often as undertaken and at any time. 
Further, we find that the proportions of the " Maria," 1 10 feet by 26 
feet 8 inches, and 6 feet greatest draft, were substantiallv those 



'Labrador, the Country and the People, by W. T. Grenfell and others, con- 
taining Wallace's historical monograph. 

^Studies on the Vineland \'o3ages, already cited. 

^G. Bleekman and P. Newton, The Blue Ribbon of the Sea, p. 60. 

*Ibid., p. 34. 



I08 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

of the old Norse pattern ; why then could not Thorfinn's big sloops, 
with everything in their favor, duplicate the " America's " feat, or at 
least make 450 miles in 48 hours ? That is less than ten miles an hour, 
a speed which has been exceeded for a long stretch by ordinary coast- 
ing craft on the Chesapeake. Twelve miles an hour would give 140 
miles more than we need. 

We are told that this northern wind held, and that they sailed 
another 48 hours to Markland, at first eastward then southward. Dr. 
Nansen thinks this direction unwise and unlikely, but the coastline 
trends that way ; they had to get around the southeast corner of Lab- 
rador, and hugging the shore might be dangerous. Exactness is im- 
possible, but it would seem that the interval stated might well bring 
them to the forested front of Newfoundland near Bonavista Bay, 
allowing for loss of speed in change of course. The experiment might 
be made by some of our enterprising yachtsmen and would be 
watched with interest. 

Newfoundland has some claims to be called Markland still, accord- 
ing to Bishop Rowley's ^ description, even most of its northern part 
being fairly well wooded. We have no reason to infer any other aspect 
then, excepting that the forest would be more general and more heavy. 
Whitbourne ^ early in the seventeenth century averred that " No 
country can show pine and birch trees of such height and greatness," 
and Blome,^ about the same time, testified to the " abundance of 
stately trees fit for timber." The vegetation of Markland has perhaps 
hardly changed at all, and the abundance of wild game mentioned 
by the saga has always characterized the island. 

Thorfinn could not be expected to know it as such, having quite 
skipped the Strait of Belle Isle in the loop around the bending 
coast from upper or middle Labrador to middle or lower Newfound- 
land ; but if they had followed this closely, it might have made little 
difference, for both Cortereal and Davis (according to Wallace) 
took that passage for a mere cul-de-sac, like Hamilton's Inlet farther 
north. 

The island called Biarney to the southeast of Markland may be 
the large Avalon peninsula, even now almost cut oft' bv water. If 
it were not quite wholly cut off then, it might well vappear so, being 
incompletely investigated. We must not charge any early voyagers 
with modern knowledge of geography. Besides instances above 



^ Vinland Vindicated, already cited. 
^A Discovery of Newfoundland, p. 10. 
^R. Blome : Isles and Territories, p. i (325) 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK IO9 

given, Cabot ' probably misunderstood Avalon as did Thorfinn, 
calling it the isle of St. John ; and Cartier,' after sailing into the Gulf, 
could only say that Newfoundland was probably an island. Some of 
the early maps also show Avalon as insular. 

The Skrellings (or savages) encountered on their return may have 
been Beothuk. Dr. Rink* thought the man's name was probably 
Eskimo, a corruption of the word for " her husband," but Thalbitzer ' 
holds otherwise (see p. 105 ante and note 9, p. 177). The under- 
ground dwellings ' remind one of the Eskimo legends concerning 
" inlanders," presumably northern Indians, Nascopie or Tinne. 
The " beard " of the escaping man was possibly a mask or some 
misunderstood garment, though the practice of plucking out hairs 
proves that a beard might grow on Amerinds, and other early 
bearded individuals are reported along our coast. It is true that the 
Labrador Eskimo were contending for foothold on the upper New- 
foundland coast early in the sixteenth century, and may have been 
thus engaged in the eleventh, but their presence in wooded regions 
seems unlikely. We can make little of these Alarklanders, perhaps 
because the Icelanders tell us so little that is trustworthy about them, 
and the English and French so little, trustworthy or not, about the 
Beothuk.* When v/e first really see the latter, they are an interior 
tribe hiding from the encompassing peoples, " altogether in the north 
and west part" says Whitbourne. Cartwright^ (i77o) says that 
summers often passed without one being seen ; and they kept this 
over-prudent habit till the end, which was probably a good deal later 
than the last known death (of a captive in 1829). One corpse was 
found aboveground in 1886; but it can hardly have lasted fifty years. 
Cormack,^ who reached their home on Red Indian Lake in 1828, 
thought the remnant of them hidden, not dead. Their arts, stature, 
and prowess may indicate some infusion of Norse blood. 

In this identification of Newfoundland with Markland, Packard, 
Nansen, and Storm and other authorities all agree ; and there are 



^M. F. Howley : The Ecclesiastical History of Newfoundland. 

^ Cartier's Voyages : Orig. Narr. Amer. Hist. ; also J. Winsor : Fi om Cartier 
to Frontenac. 

^H. J. Rink: Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 74. 

*W. Thalbitzer: The Eskimo Language, p. 20. 

'H. J. Rink: Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, pp. 262, 298. 

"Alan MacDougall : The Beothuk Indians. Trans. Royal Inst, of Canada, 
1890-1891. p. 8. 

'Capt. Cartwright's Journal, republished 1911, first 20 pages. 

^Cormack: Journey in Search of the Red Indians in Newfoundland. 
Edinb. Philos. Journ., vol. 6, 1828-1829, p. 327. 



no SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

no opposing names that should carry equal weight. Also, the facts 
uphold them. 

The words of the saga from their third start are : " When two 
doegr had elapsed they descried land." Then they must have been 
without sight of it, at least ahead. Presumably, having rounded 
Biarney, they kept along, nearly parallel to the lower face of New- 
foundland, in " the sea flowing in between Wineland and Markland," 
which we know as the Strait of Cabot. They may even have gone 
farther, before turning to the opposite northern promontory of 
Wineland (now Cape Breton Island west of the Bras d'Or inland sea), 
for we know that Thorhall, an experienced explorer, afterward loudly 
complained that they had neglected this better course to Wineland, 
and insisted on going back to try it ; and this theory of his, with 
other expressions like sailing " around Keelness," imply some notion 
of the great Gulf beyond the long promontory's tip. The Saga of 
Thorfinn Karlsefni does not specify the time consumed before making 
the new landfall and is not so clear in its indication of crossing the 
intervening water. Furthermore, it mentions sailing south along the 
land ; but we must not be too literal about directions. We find 
Champlain saying south, when he clearly means southeast, and repeat- 
edly parting company with the map in such details, though he had a 
compass to guide him and was unusually careful. With Thorfinn it 
was guess-work and sun-piloting or star-piloting ; and they have many 
fogs in those regions. The two parallel versions agree substantially, 
here as elsewhere, and help out each other's details ; but that of 
Eric the Red is, I think, a little the clearer. 

Whether they used up 48 hours or not in the passage, they had to 
" beat back " a rather long way into the wind, or we should hardly 
have heard of the disadvantage; so they must have been well on 
toward the tip of Keelness before turning to tack eastward through 
the strait, with, of course, the land on their right. This shore was 
that on which they are said to have found the keel of a ship, washed 
down presumably by the Labrador current, perhaps a relic of Eric's 
broken fleet. Those investigators who have tried to pick out a par- 
ticular point as Keelness are clearly wrong ; for Stefansson's equiva- 
lent " promontorium Winelandium " is a great though upwardly 
tapering body of land, and the suffix '' ness " is to be understood, as in 
Snaefelsness and generally in Iceland, to include the whole jutting 
area of western Cape Breton Island. We have indeed a similar use of 
" Neck " along Chesapeake Bay, for it means in common parlance not 
the connecting isthmus nor any spot or tooth of land, but always the 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK III 

entire mass which is nearly insulated. In this sense it is also an 
accepted geographic term, to be found plentifully on Maryland maps.' 
Some of these " necks " are of considerable area. 

That this Keelness is in fact an island goes for nothing. Many 
after their time were slow in finding it out, as in the more remarkable 
case of the Strait of Belle Isle. Wytfliet's map of 1597 shows Cape 
Breton Island as a solid horn, integral with the mainland of Nova 
Scotia, and so, on a smaller scale, does the map attributed to Sebastian 
Cabot; though they multiply outlying islands. Mercator, 1587, goes 
to the other extreme, however, by setting it well out from shore with 
the significant inscription " Drogio dit Cornu du Gallia." Thus some 
geographers knew Cape Breton's insularity and some did not, after 
a century's opportunity to ascertain. 

A different explanation of the name Keelness is offered by the 
Flateybook Saga, namely, that it has the form of a ship's keel ; and this 
records an observed resemblance as old as the fourteenth century. 
A great part of the island is hollow now. When the lowlying south- 
eastern side was under water, the resemblance of the remaining horn 
on the western side to a keel would be more obvious. But since there 
was a Kjalarness in Iceland, probably well known to some of these 
explorers, we may safely assvmie a simple transfer of the name. The 
saga laid stress on this northern horn of Wineland, for no navigator 
who might follow could miss finding a feature so conspicuous. 

The course of the ships is explained by it at every turn, as though 
it were a main pivot of proceedings in that quarter. It is on the 
starboard in the saga as the ships go south along the coast; on the 
larboard as Thorfinn long afterward reverses the course to pass round 
it into the Gulf after the missing Thorhall ; he anchors on its western 
side in a westward flowing river (the Margarie or the Mabou) and 
passes northward along it in leaving that region. Each point is made 
with precision almost as if dictating items for a map. The original 
narrator evidently intended that there should be no misunderstanding 
of this great peninsula; but every one is at the mercy of mankind 
and the centuries. 

There is a further argument for Cape Breton Island as Keelness 
in the corresponding position of the tip of the former and that of 
Stefansson's Promontorium Winelandium as compared with the lati- 
tude of Britain and Ireland. Also, the Stefansson map has a range 
of elevations running up into it, quite inconsistent with Cape Cod, 



'For example Lake, Griffingand Stevenson. Atlas of Kent and Queen Anne 
Counties, Maryland, p. 30 and elsewhere. 



112 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

the only competitor that has been seriously urged. Finally, the 
stranding of the wreck which left its keel, if we may treat this as 
a verity, would be much more likely to occur on Cape Breton Island 
than on Cape Cod in times when the sailing was all farther northward, 
and in view of the arrangement and direction of the ocean streams. 
But we are at liberty to dismiss the keel, 

A wonderful succession of beaches and low shores began with 
Keelness, being whatever was above water of the eastern earth-wall 
of the Bras d'Or and the main seashore of Nova Scotia. Apparently 
it was such a coast as we find now along New Jersey or Maryland, 
seemingly interminable strands, with nothing but low sand dunes 
and occasional inlets to break the monotony of desolation and loneli- 
ness. Few things in nature are more impressive, but it is not a cheer- 
ing impression. We may fancy Gudrid and her companions looking 
over the landward gunwale at that unchanging panorama, with woods 
and hills of little variety for a background, and wondering if they 
would never have done. Surely we can give no other meaning to 
" This was a bleak coast with low and sandy shores. They called 
them wonderstrands because they were so long." The plural may 
indicate slight breaks in the outline here and there. 

These people had swift ships. Beaches of ordinary length must 
also have been familiar to all of them. They would not feel a 
monotonous sail of but four or five hours. They would not marvel 
at a stretch of fifty miles ; but if they had to follow down from Cape 
Henlopen to Cape Charles, or along any equal stretch of strand, they 
might well record the wearying novelty as a " wonder." It would 
rank equal with the great treeless wastes of Helluland or the immense 
forest area below, or that great " ness " which guarded the entrance to 
the inner Gulf. I think the Wonderstrands must have stretched for 
at least a hundred miles. 

' On grounds to be explained, it seems more than probable that 
the main Wineland home of these settlers was at the mouth of the 
Bay of Fundy. Between the tip of Cape Breton and that point, we 
have the outer coast-line of Nova Scotia, said to be somewhat over 
three hundred and fifty miles. Obviously then, the outer coast-line 
of Nova Scotia was their Wonderstrands. The palpable fact that 
Nova Scotia does not now supply these wonderstrands except perhaps 
on a lesser, though relatively considerable scale along the front of 
Richmond County over which boats are sometimes drawn, to the 
interior Bras d'Or, seems to have compelled Dr. Storm to piece out 
this part of his theory with minor beaches that the Icelanders would 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK II3 

have hardly glanced at as they swept by. What v^^ould a mile of sand 
be to such craft and such spirits as theirs ? Even a man in a row-boat 
would not have time to wear)' of that. Make it ten miles, and the 
case is yet even absurdly hopeless ; for ten consecutive miles of strand 
cannot be found along the mainland of Nova Scotia. Thirty miles or 
so of low shore may be found perhaps in eastern Cape Breton Island, 
but would be little better if above water then. The plain fact is that 
the saga must be given up as false, in this part at least, and — since this 
is of its very spinal cord- — as untrustworthy altogether or we must 
assume the erroneous transfer to this point of an observation made 
elsewhere, unless there be some adequate explanation. And there is 
such explanation. The coast line now consists generally of low cliffs 
or banks, not comparable to the lofty precipices of Grand Manan, but 
let us suppose that this is not constant in height, but that, for good 
reason, it has been rising continually. Reckoning back, it would be 
correspondingly lower at any given time, supposing no counteracting 
cause intervened to reverse or check it or vary the rate of emergence. 

Our starting point is about a present average of 25 feet, perhaps 
rather more — as indeed my own slight and local observations would 
make me suppose. But the above has been given me as a rough 
approximation by a journalist formerly resident in that province, 
and is pretty well confirmed by a Boston yachtsman and an intelli- 
gent fisherman of Grand Manan, both personally familiar with that 
shore. Of course it is barely provisional, exactness not being hoped 
for. 

It does not seem to have occurred to anyone concerned in such 
researches that a definite and steady change may have been going on. 
Rev. Mr. Slafter offers the nearest approach, that I recall, to such a 
view, in the suggestion that islands have shifted and new land has 
formed, making identification impracticable — but that is obviously 
far from presenting a consciousness of explainable, progressive 
change. Now conceive the Nova Scotian seaboard lowered by the 
25 feet or more of its present height, that is, brought down to water- 
level and dipped a little under — with slight narrowing of the penin- 
sula, in its mainland part, and partial obliteration of the eastern side 
of the now hollow insular terminal part called Cape Breton Island — 
and you will have something not wholly unlike the long strands of 
New Jersey or the peninsula east of the Chesapeake, only with the 
hill country much nearer. It was the first introduction of the sur- 
prised northern visitors to the characteristic American coast line. 

The probable reason for such a change is simple enough. The 
withdrawal northward of the great glacial ice-cap, from half a mile 



114 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

to two miles in thickness, freed all the continent as far down as the 
southern border of New England from an enormous weight and chill. 
Forthwith the elasticity of the strata began lifting them slowly behind 
it, and the movement continues still in a great slow wave, even after 
the lapse of some thousands of years. 

Prof. Packard ^ long ago quoted a previous observer as to the 
uplifting of the Labrador coast, adding his own testimony. Prof. 
McGee, whom I have consulted, puts the neutral point where there 
is neither ascent nor descent, on the Gulf of Maine, north of Boston, 
perhaps not far from the New Hampshire line, but the recent investi- 
gations of Mr. Davis " carry it somewhat farther north. All above 
rises ; below it is the resulting depression or trough of the earth wave, 
gradually lessening in downward movement. Apparently the earth 
crust behaves like a blanket undulated. Professor Brown of 
Brown's University writes that five hundred feet of uplift in all are 
reported from Labrador, and nearly seven hundred from parts of the 
Hudson Bay region. Prof. Shaler ''^ has elaborately explained this de- 
pression and re-elevation. Mr. Davis's marsh investigations add 
another proof of the movement by demonstrating the complementary 
recent sinking below. The recent work on Labrador, the Country and 
the People, by W. T. Grenfell and others contains on page 118 a 
map giving the figures of uplift since the glacial era at various points 
of the Newfoundland and Labrador front, making 575 feet at St. 
Johns the maximum. Pages 127-135, etc., of this section, by R. A. 
Daly, add further discussion of this phenomenon and the general 
testimony of residents of the coast to its continuance. 

Even these results would have seemed inadequate while men held 
by the prodigious periods of the astronomical glacial theories. But 
the observations of Shaler at Niagara, and of other investigators, 
all the way from the northwest to the Atlantic ocean, have built up a 



^A. S. Packard: The Labrador Coast. 

''C. A. Davis : Salt Marsh Formation. Economic Geolog)', vol. 5, no. 7 (1910) . 

^N. S. Shaler: Nature and Man in America, p. 96 and context ; also his 
Aspects of the Earth, pp. 2, 3, 6, 7, "As when a glacial sheet is imposed on a 
continent — as it was in the immediate past in North America — a wide area of 
the ice-laden land sank beneath the sea; to recover its level when the depres- 
sing burden was removed." Cf. A. R. Wallace: The Geographical Distribu- 
tion of Animals, vol. l, p. 152 — "the weight of ice piled up in the north would 
cause the land surface to sink there, perhaps unequally, owing to the varying 
nature of the interior crust of the earth; and since the weight has been re- 
moved land would rise again still somewhat irregularly, and thus the phenomena 
of raised beaches of arctic shells in temperate latitudes are explained." 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK II5 

great array of evidence, tending to reduce the interval from hundreds 
of thousands to a very few thousand years. 

Wright's Greenland Ice Fields and The Ice Age in North America 
long ago presented this matter strongly, though without converting 
every one. More recently in the Anthropologist he has suggested 
5000 B. C, and perhaps the prevailing estimate of the interval since 
the beginning of the withdrawal of the only ice-sheet which can have 
directly affected the fortunes of man would now make it less than 
eight times the nine hundred years since the coming of Thorfinn, 
though there are some dissentients. 

Of course the lifting forces or the resistance may have varied in 
stress from time to time, for reasons not readily to be fathomed, 
or some other crustal movements may have interposed, or there may 
have been counteracting influences yet unknown. Also there may 
have been local eddy-like exceptions of downward crumpling or earth- 
quake depression,' as perhaps on the shore of the Bay of Acadia, 
not affecting the Atlantic coast. This depression seems to have 
ended long ago, and may perhaps be paired with the convulsion that 
sank so much land, leaving tree stumps at the bottom of lakes and a 
in marshes near New Madrid, Missouri, early in the nineteenth 
century. 

Perhaps there has not been sufficient search for direct evidence 
in situ of uplift along the Nova Scotian coast such as we have so 
strikingly from Labrador and the upper part of the Maine sea- 
front. Locally there is some scientific opinion or feeling that this 
probably has not occurred. Indeed a positive descent^ of the shore 
at certain points, notably Louisbourg, used to be inferred from the 
submergence of the old French works. But later investigation ' 
has shown that the facts do not call for such an inference, the military 
architects having planted their embankments in the water ; and no 
change either way in elevation can be said to be directly proved. 
There has not been time for any conspicuous effect, and the shifting 
of water currents and of sand, or other local conditions may 
apparently reduce it. 

Nova Scotian direct evidence not counting either way, we must 
accept for guide the action of natural laws shown to have taken 
effect on the relatively more southern, as well as the more northern, 



'J. W. Dawson: Acadian Geology, p. 3; also supplement, pp. 13-21. 
^ Gessner : in Journ. Geol. Soc. London, vol. 18, p. 36. 

^ H. S. Poole : Subsidence of the Atlantic Coast Line of Nova Scotia. Trans. 
Nova Scotian Inst, of Science, vol. 11, p. 262 and Alclntosli, p. 264. 



Il6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

parts of the American Atlantic coast. In the absence of any indica- 
tion of counteracting forces, it would be unreasonable to arbitrarily 
assume them. What has happened and is happening between Nor- 
folk and Boston implies a corresponding reverse movement in the 
coast between Labrador and the middle of Maine, or wherever 
the neutral point may be. This reach of shore almost certainly in- 
cludes Nova Scotia ; the sea-front of which has the air of an emerg- 
ing shore, as different as possible from a descending one, where old 
river valleys become broadened estuaries, bordered by marshes, low 
islands and broad sand banks, as in the region of the Chesapeake and 
Delaware. 

Dr. Nansen, discarding the explanation of the saga and apparently 
forgetting the natural transformation of a coast-line in a formerly 
glaciated region, supposes that the Wonderstrands were originally 
named for the wonders which they exhibited. He does not suggest 
what these may have been beyond a hesitating note concerning won- 
derfully beautiful islands of myth and fancy. But there is surely only 
a faint verbal link between the wonder of supreme beauty and the 
wonder of impressive desolation. Also it is most incredible that the 
saga should have omitted all mention of prodigies which conferred 
one of its most important local names. And what marvels could 
they own, surpassing the almost appalling interminable succession of 
strands and dunes, constituting now as then the dominant typical 
American coast-line ? 

Whatever else may be doubted there is no denying that some Ice- 
lander, before 1334 — when Hauk died, who copied for us the passage 
in question, had become acquainted with the American Atlantic coast 
as we see it now with slight breaks in its upper part from the tip of 
Florida to the tip of Cape Cod. Did Hauk come here or the saga- 
man ? There is no record of any visits before that time except those 
of the saga and even the Flateybook version avers that " of all men 
Karlsefni has given the most exact accounts of all these voyages." 
Leif must already have seen that strange coast and prepared him for 
it. There is no great reason to doubt that Thorfinn saw it also. 

The Wonderstrands (if Nova Scotia) were not remarkable for high 
tides and strong currents. On the contrary, these were (and are) 
rather feeble. Cabot found but 2^ to 4 feet of rise and fall, and 
Harrisse,^ reporting him, says : " This diminutiveness is peculiar to 



'H. Harrisse : The Discovery of North America, p. 8. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 11/ 

the entire coast, from Nova Scotia to Labrador." ^ An intelligent 
white native of Grand Manan, being asked in my presence about its 
great tides, at once mentioned the two feet or three feet tides of the 
Magdalen Islands, which he had visited — a contrast as sharp as that 
between the sea-level upper coast in 1003, and his own miles of 
towering cliffs. The latter would lose little in impressiveness by 
30 feet or even 60 feet of lowering ; and the great rush of water up 
Straumfiord (Grand Manan Channel) along their northwestern 
front, would perhaps be a little greater than it is now, but certainly 
not less. 

The same applies to the series of more than picturesque, deep, 
broad, fiord-like indentions, mountain-sentineled, with lofty islands 
out before them or in them, and contours for the most part necessarily 
unchanging in a thousand years, which characterize the upper sea- 
coast of Maine, beginning with Passamaquoddy Bay. For Grand 
Manan, lying across the front of the admirable inner expanse, visible, 
as Denys says, from afar at sea, and necessarily the next land for the 
explorers as they crossed the Bay of Fundy (heading a little west of 
north after rounding the nose of Nova Scotia, and avoiding the shoals 
of the Admiralty chart) was indeed the herald of a new order of 
things. It is no wonder that even these Icelanders, accustomed to 
mountains and sea-currents, were deeply impressed by the change. 

Osgood's book on the Maritime Provinces wakens to something of 
an outburst about " Grand Manan," which " lies in the mouth of the 
Bay of Fundy, whose giant tides sweep imperiously by its shores." 
This, however, would not now apply quite perfectly to the sloping, 
harbor-indented, inhabited southeastern side, with its outlying fringe 
of low islands, though the official chart shows violent tide rips, and Dr. 
Fewkes testifies to '' currents of great power." It is the " back of the 
island," as they call it, the wilderness side (whence you may look 
down on Campobello near Eastport and plainly distinguish many of 
the western mainland mountains), which enjoys the roughest kisses 
of the racing tide. No one who watches the gulls sway backward and 
forward in great fleets in the rush of water and the long eddy off the 
north point by the fog whistle, or keeps company a bit with the dulse- 
gatherers on the slippery rocks, or looks down from the southern 
cliffs on the foam about their bases, or considers the wave-carven 



'The following figures are given by Verplanck Colvin in bis Calculations on 
"Plutarch's Account of Ancient Voyages to the New World," p. 3 : Hopedale, 
Labrador 7 feet; Anticosti, 5 feet; St. Johns, N. F., 6 feet; Trinity Bay, N. 
F., 3* feet; Kennebec, 9 feet; Portland, 9.9 feet; Boston, 11 feet; New 
London, 3 feet; New York, 5 feet. 



Il8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

" Hole-in-the-wall," the seated " Bishop," now losing his outline, and 
the progressively defaced but still recognizable " Southern Cross " — 
no one who has ever crossed in slightly roughened weather the dis- 
turbing inflow of the western strait, or stood on Todd's Point in East- 
port, the most easterly bit of land of the United States, and tossed 
pebbles into the hurry of the twenty-five feet of tide that chafes the 
rocky little promontory — will be likely to question Osgood's descrip- 
tion, or the propriety of the names Norsemen-given. Thus Dr. 
Fewkes ' reports " sometimes the moving water is irresistible, carry- 
ing everything along with it under the brow of the high land." 

It is not well to be blindly confident in such matters, and any 
further light on the subject will be most welcome ; but with the infor- 
mation at hand, after much endeavor, this identification seems to me 
most likely. The Flateybook's account is badly blurred in the tell- 
ing, and too confusingly blends the characteristics of Hop and 
Straumfiord (without mentioning the former) to be very helpful ; but 
even in it we have the outlying island, which must have especially 
impressed all the party ; and the description of the wide shallows 
left by the ebbing tide belongs peculiarly to the lateral branches and 
upper arms of the Bay of P'undy. It could not well be otherwise, 
with sixty-feet daily change of level at Monkton, and thirty-two feet 
even at the reversing falls of St. John. The Bay of Fundy is simply 
unique in these respects on our coast and Straumey and Straumfiord 
can belong nowhere else (see note 10, p. 178). 

Nearly all the statements of the trustworthy and little defaced 
narrative of the two parallel sagas are exactly borne out by present 
facts. They came to " a fiord-cut shore " of mountain valleys filled 
with water, forming bays, and these in due succession are there still. 
They sailed into one of these bays or fiords, a statement twice made, 
curiously marking as already stated where a later hand has interpo- 
lated the apocryphal episode of the Gaelic runners Haki and H?ekia. 
" They sailed through the firth " to reach this bay, which was included 
under the same name, for we read later that " in the spring they went 
into Straumfiord and obtained provisions from both regions." Of 
course the same passage has to be made stilly and of course the strait 
and bay are connected ; though their union was no doubt more obvious 
then, a good part of the narrow Campobello island and Lubec headland 
being under water. These, with Eastport island and other neigh- 
boring territory would appear as minor islets in a somewhat larger 



'J. W. Fewkes: A Zoological Reconnoissance in Grand Manan. American 
Naturalist, May, 1890, p. 424. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK II9 

bay than now remains, then opening rather freely to the strait. With 
regard to the precise farther extension of Straumfiord, as they under- 
stood it, we need not concern ourselves ; and probably they did not 
define this, any more than the average man of lower ^Manhattan who 
mentions and sees " the Xorth River " has any clear idea whether its 
utmost north is in the Adirondacks, Vermont, or Canada. They 
cared mainly, though not quite wholly, for what directly afifected their 
welfare. The eggs of the island, ducks' eggs according to the saga 
of Eric, birds' eggs according to that of Thorfinn Karlsefni, which 
is a little the better in this instance, are a case in point. They were 
probablv gulls' eggs, cormorants' eggs, and those of the eider-duck, 
black duck, and other water fowl. The numerous gulls still lay some 
eggs in the most nearly inaccessible niches of the cliiTs near South 
Head. Above it there is a fine level table land, which may well have 
been fully occupied by nesting sea-fowl in the times before the 
advent of men (and boys), aided in destruction, as I am told, by a 
great recent multiplication of hungry foxes. It is not surprising that 
most of the egg-laying is now done on the outlying islets, where per- 
secution is less constant. 

Denys,' about 1645, after defining Passamaquoddy Bay as " a cove 
of great circuit," says " Opposite the last cove and some distance out 
at sea, occur some islands, the largest of which is called the island of 
Menane. It can be seen from afar as one comes from the sea .... 
On all these islands .... there is a great number of all kinds of 
birds which go there in the spring to produce their young." 

It was the proper locality for such finds. Champlain tells us of 
filling a cask with cormorant eggs on Hope Island, and of an almost 
unbelievable number of birds, including ducks of three different 
kinds, on the Tusket Islands, all about the mouth of Fundy Bay. Also 
a little later, when the eggs had become young birds, he collected 
many of the latter on the Wolves, only a short distance up Fundy 
Bay from Grand Manan. It is not certain that he landed on the latter, 
though he sailed near it three times at least and anchored once 
in Seal Cove, a harbor of its more accessible side, with almost a 
shipwreck. 

Dr. Nansen doubts the plentiful nesting of birds, thinks them a 
Norwegian reminiscence, and in particular excludes gulls and auks. 
But a local ornithologist of North Head, Grand Manan, who is as well 
informed on the subject as anybody in the world, gives me by letter 



' N. Denys : Description of the Coast of North America. Ganong's transl. 
pp. no III. 



I20 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

the places and nesting times for razor-billed auks, American eider 
ducks and herring- gulls, all quite near him, 500 to 1,000 eggs of the 
last-named being still collected annually from one islet before the 
brief open season ends. After that they are rigidly preserved. See 
also Packard's account already cited of the multitudinous nesting 
gannets and lesser birds on rocky islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 
and Cartwright's and Cartier's as to like conditions on Funk Island 
off the Newfoundland Atlantic shore. 

It is a curious but easily explainable fact that our white people have 
largely followed Indian paths and settled in numbers on Indian 
village sites. The same conveniences, obstacles and allurements affect 
both alike, to a certain point, in the simpler matters of existence. 
There may be a special illustration of this in the established and 
ancient habit of the Passamaquoddy Indians, to cross and recross 
the strait annually in their canoes, having their home astride of it, 
so to speak, and obtaining supplies from both shores. They no longer 
maintain a permanent village on the island, having withdrawn for 
superstitious reasons (it is said) but the habit of annual or more fre- 
quent migrations across Grand Manan Channel for sport and food is 
hardly yet abandoned. The Norsemen did likewise and for like 
reasons, the resources being enumerated in the saga. It is perhaps 
a case where the usual procedure had been reversed, the Indian 
following the white man, for that region seems to have been empty 
of inhabitants on their arrival and during the three years (once inter- 
rupted) of their occupancy, as Strachey declares the lower course of 
the Susquehanna to have been, or as some parts of Kentucky perhaps 
were, or lower Greenland at the time of Eric's settlement; indeed, 
until after 1300, according to Dr. Rink' and Dr. Storm. It is a 
common phenomenon in the case of a sparse native population, not 
deeply anchored. 

The Indians of the region at the time of our first knowledge con- 
cerning them were the Micmac or Souriquois of Nova Scotia, extend- 
ing west of the head of the Bay of Fundy into Northern New Bruns- 
wick, the Malicete or Milicete of the western side of the bay and the 
Passamaquoddy, often referred to on Grand Manan as the American 
Indians. The Maguaquadevic Indians about St. George and the neigh- 
boring lakes are the border tribe of Malicete on the Passamaquoddy 
side. There is said to be a portrait of one in the Illustrated London 
News of Sept. 5, 1863. They were notable for at least one dolmen- 



' H. A. Rink : Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 74. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 121 

like stone erection ' with an oval roof-tablet, supposed to have been set 
up by them but now long overturned, and perhaps for the stone 
medallion already mentioned, which was found in their territory. 

Right there was the meeting point of two streams of Indian 
migration, as it had been previously the border of Norse occupancy, 
or at least the scene of daily Norse excursions after game. The 
Micmac, and presumably the rather more nearly related Malicete, 
followed down the St. Lawrence valley, while the Penobscot and 
their kindred the Passamaquoddy appear to have worked on up the 
Atlantic. All these people were of the ancient Algonquian stem, but 
the two branches had been long separated when fate thus drew them 
again together ; for even yet the languages ' of the Malicete and 
Passamaquoddy borderers differ considerably and the Micmac use a 
verv different pattern of canoe (upturned at both ends) from that of 
the " American Indians,'' although occasionally visiting, from near 
Digby. the same island of Grand Manan. 

We do not know when this first meeting took place ; but, as before 
emphasized, the Norse date (say 1003) is very early. If we suppose 
that the movement down the St. Lawrence valley had not yet reached 
the site of ]\Ionckton nor the upper waters of the St. John and that the 
movement up the Atlantic coast had not yet passed the Kennebec, 
we shall have the requisite Indian vacuum. There is nothing to sug- 
guest that any Eskimo ever crossed the Maritime Provinces in those 
davs or skirted their eastern border, no reason to suppose that the 
Beothuk extended so far down the coast, and we cannot assume any 
other native occupants for this corner of the Bay of Fundy shore. 

Anv one who will mount Battery Hill above Eastport and look 
about him will understand " there were mountains around " ; the 
country is *' fine " still and the hay crop both on the mainland and 
Grand Manan — for we were there in the height of that season — is 
really remarkable. They must have found excellent grazing. Excel- 
lent hunting, too, for the resources are not yet exhausted. We were 
told of a moose which had recently visited the bay shore near East- 
port and were offered in that city the skins of seals shot by Indians 
verv recently on or near Grand Manan. A whale had entered within 
a few days the cove of that name, beside which we were lodged on the 
island, just as another came into the hands of Thorfinn's people, to 
their temporary discomfiture. They would be likely to establish them- 



' Jack: Stone Found in New Brunswick. Smithsonian Rep. for 1881, before 
cited. 

^ Trans. Royal Soc. Canada, 1904, p. 20. 

9 



122 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

selves there or near the northern point where the Indians afterward 
had their annually occupied settlement, and close at hand are the 
cliffs, on one of which they caught Thorhall worshipping- Thor, and 
over which they may have cast the fragments of whale-flesh " on the 
rocks.'' 

It was most natural that Norsemen should be deceived by the 
bountiful mild season into the belief that they need not provide 
against winter, since they felt themselves in Leif's country, which was 
said to be like Africa. De Monts' colonists on an island of the St. 
Croix, flowing into the same bay, though far better provided in 
every respect, had a most discouraging and even ghastly winter. 
Their best man, Champlain,' appositely declares : 

It would be very difficult to ascertain the character of this region without 
spending a winter in it ; for on arriving here in summer everything is very 
agreeable, in consequence of the woods, nne country and the many varieties of 
good fish which are found there. There are six months of winter in this 
country. 

The summer advantages could never have been greater than when 
the Norsemen came. When winter struck them and the game had 
withdrawn to a distance and the snow impeded their landward travel, 
it was not unnatural that they should shift to the great island, where 
fish and amphibious animals were closer at hand, also from which 
the land animals could not well escape. Moose were found on it 
in the boyhood of an elderly resident, who talked with me, and there 
are still some deer, though partly at least of late reintroduction. 
It ought to have been easy to arrange a drive of animals toward 
some corner of the cliffs and supply themselves with meat ; and 
when it was not possible to fish outside there were (and are) trout 
in the brooks, also eels, on which the Indians afterward depended, 
in a string of ponds, the most northerly and best known of which is 
in the wilderness between the old Indian site (now a hamlet of 
fishers and dulse gatherers) and the prosperous village of North 
Head. There could be no lack of good fresh water. 

The migration to the island seems a wise move, and perhaps did 
more than anything else to carry them through without the deaths and 
disabling maladies of Champlain's companions. Their stock also 
lived, and throve, probably on birch-twigs, dried fish (for Norwegian 
cattle are said to make the best of such winter fare) and the half dry 
grasses and other vegetable survivals of the springy inland hollows 
and southeastern marshes. The sea never freezes there and the tide 
would always wash up or lay bare something that might be of service. 



'Voyages of Champlain. Original Narratives of Early American History. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 1 23 

But at the best it would be a disappointing winter, without any store 
of grain such as they might have had in a country where wild rice was 
plentiful and without the wine which Thorhall angrily celebrates 
between lamentation and satire. It is impossible not to sympathize 
with his disillusion in the matter of this Wineland. We can readily 
understand his disbelief that this could be the real region or even 
the right course for reaching it. Thorfinn was right, and matters 
would not have been mended by turning into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 
as he afterwards found ; but it was all experimental at first, opinion 
against opinion, the chief trouble being that Leif had given them a 
standard which was true for a more southern part of the coast, but 
very misleading and disappointing when they applied it to northeast- 
ern Maine and the neighboring corner of New Brunswick. 

These occurrences bring out saliently the fact that they found no 
" unsown wheat " nor grapevines at Straumfiord or on Straumey. 
They do not profess to have done so. There is not the least entry 
indicating either plant, or its grain or fruit, except the interpolated 
story of Haki and H?ekia who ran " to the south," we do not know 
how far (but they were " fleeter than deer "'), and brought back suigle 
specimens only. If there be any truth in this episode, and if it belongs 
to the narrative not of Leif but of Thorfinn, we must place it with the 
explorations of that first summer or early autumn. Their bunch might 
probably have been obtained from the Penobscot in the three half 
days allowed them. Champlain found a few large grapes and grape- 
vines on the lower Maine coast, but none anywhere above Portland 
nor inland in Xova Scotia. According to Lescarbot,^ the apothecary 
of their expedition desired to transplant Cape Cod grape vines to the 
lovely Annapolis valley of the latter province, which had none, though 
one would expect them to spring up there spontaneously, if anywhere 
in all that province. 

The general result of inquiries among Maine people is that wild 
grapes of proper size and quality for table use or wine-making do 
not ripen in that State, owing to the shortness of the summer and 
the severity of the frosts, so as to benefit anybody appreciably except 
the botanists. But if some far ranging runners brought even two 
or three back to Thorfinn from the southward these might confirm 
his resolution to seek in that direction a country where such things 
abounded. When he had compromised with Thorhall and seen him 
" prepare for his voyage below the island " — no doubt in one of the 
southeastern harbors or among the outlying islets — Thorfinn must 
have wished that he had kept on at first, like Leif, into warmer 



^T>escarbot: Nova Francia. Erondelle's transl., pp. loi, 102. 



124 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

latitudes, lived in comfort and held the whole party together. This 
seems to be his worst mistake, and Champlain has accounted for 
it abundantly. 

I made diligent search and inquiry on Grand Manan, also inquired 
a little in Eastport, and it seems clear that there are no grapes worth 
mentioning about Passamaquoddy Bay, nor indeed anywhere near the 
Bay of Fundy. Southern New England is their farthest northern 
home in quantities and of size to be useful. 

The sea-fishing, so particularly stated in the saga, is still the 
prime resource of the Passamaquoddy region including Grand Manan. 
In fact, except hay-making, there is hardly another resource of general 
value. Two or three thousand people of the island live by fishing 
in more than decent comfort, while on the nearby mainland there has 
been built up at Lubec the chief American center of one branch of this 
industry. 

Considering the many coincidences of the present and past facts 
with the items of the saga and the absence of any real objection, it 
seems that Grand Manan and Passamaquoddy Bay with the strait be- 
tween them may be accepted provisionally as Straumey and Straum- 
fiord. But even if we err as to the exact places named in the saga, it 
seems practically certain that these were not far from the sweeping 
tides of Fundy. The Icelanders could not come into this region with- 
out observing them, and how could they pass by, giving such titles 
to lesser examples of the same kind ? The verbal distinction between 
stream and current, sometimes suggested, must in this conection be 
regarded as overstrained. Besides, the official chart in its " rips " 
and " eddies " offers an abundance of " stream," and Dr. Fewkes 
characterizes them clearly in his zoological paper already cited. 

It may be well to consider as an alternative. Long Island on the 
opposite side of the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, and the narrow 
passage, now St. Mary's Bay, between it and the mainland of Nova 
Scotia, where Champlain found a violent and dangerous current. But 
the island seems too close to the mainland for the language of the 
saga, since the passage could be easily and promptly made at any 
season : and it is hardly a sufficiently distinguishable " region." 

15.— THE EXPEDITION TO HOP 
After the departure of Thorhall the Hunter, and Thorfinn's 
decision '' to proceed southward along- the land and to the eastward," 
the saga savs : ' 



*A. M. Reeves: The Finding of Wineland the Good. Translation of saga 
continued. See footnotes. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK I25 

It is now to be told of Karlsefiii, that he cruised southward off the coast, 
with Snorri and Biarni, and their people. They sailed for a long time, and 
until they came at last to a river, which flowed down from the land into a 
lake, and so into the sea. There were great bars at the mouth of the river, 
so that it could only be entered at the height of the flood-tide. Karlsefni and 
his men sailed into the mouth of the river and called it there Hop. They 
found self-sown -wheat-fields on the land there, zi.'herczrer there zvere hollows, 
and wherever there was hilly ground, there i^'cre Z'ines. Every brook there 
was full of fish. They dug pits, on the shore where the tide rose highest, and 
when the tide fell, there were halibut in the pits. There were great numbers 
of wild animals of all kinds in the woods. They remained there half a month, 
and enjoyed themselves, and kept no watch. They had their live-stock with 
them. 

Now one morning early, when they looked about them, they saw nine skin- 
canoes, and staves were brandished from the boats, with a noise like flails, and 
they were revolved in the same direction in which the sun moves. Then said 
Karlsefni " What may this betoken ? " Snorri's son Thorbrand, answers him : 
" It may be this is a signal of peace, wherefore let us take a white shield and 
display it." And thus they did. Thereupon the strangers rowed toward them, 
and went upon the land, marvelling at those whom they saw before them 
.... [For description see p. 143 herein] and then rowed away, and to the 
southward around the point. 

Karlsefni and his followers had built their huts above the lake, some dwell- 
ings were near the mainland, and some near the lake. Now they remained 
there that winter. No snow whatever came there, and all of their live-stock 
lived by grazing. And when spring opened, they discovered, early one morn- 
ing, a great number of skin-canoes rowing from the south past the cape, so 
numerous, that it looked as if coals had been scattered broadcast out before 
the bay ; and on every boat staves were waved. Thereupon Karlsefni and his 
people displayed their shields, and when they came together, they began to 
barter with each other. Especially did the strangers wish to buy red cloth, 
for which they offered in exchange peltries and quite grey skins. They also 
desired to buy swords and spears, but Karlsefni and Snorri forbade this. In 
exchange for perfect unsullied skins, the Skrellings would take red stuff a 
span in length, which they would bind around their heads.' So their trade 
went on for a time, until Karlsefni and his people began to grow short of 
cloth, when they divided it into such narrow pieces, that it was not more 
than a finger's breadth wide, but the Skrellings still continued to give just as 
much as before, or more. 

It so happened that a bull, which belonged to Karlsefni and his people, ran 
out from the woods, bellowing loudly. This so terrified the Skrellings, that 
they sped out to their canoes, and then rowed away to the southward along 
the coast. For three wrecks nothing more was seen of them. At the end of this 
time, however, a great multitude of Skrelling boats was discovered approaching 
from the south, as if a stream were pouring down, and all their staves were 
waved in a direction contrary to the course of the sun, and the Skrellings were 
all uttering loud cries. Thereupon Karlsefni and his men took red shields and 



'W. H. Dall: The Tribes of the Extreme Northwest, p. 238. Exact parallel 
in early trading. See also as to red headwear in southern New England, a later 
quotation from Champlain. 



126 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

displayed them. The Skrellings sprang from their boats, and they met then, 
and fought together. There " was a fierce shower of missiles, for the Skrel- 
Jings had war-slings." Karlsefni and Snorri observed, that the Skrellings 
raised up on poles a great ball-shaped body, almost the size of a sheep's belly, 
and nearly black in color, and this they hurled from the pole upon the land 
above Karlsefni's followers, and it made a frightful noise, where it fell. 
Whereat a great fear seized upon Karlsefni, and all his men, so that they 
could think of nought but flight .... for it seemed to them, that the troop of 
Skrellings was rushing towards them from every side, and they did not pause, 
until they came to certain jutting crags where they offered a stout resistance. 
Freydis came out, and seeing that Karlsefni and his men were fleeing, she 
cried : " Why do ye flee from these wretches, such worthy men as ye, when, 
me-seems, ye might slaughter them like cattle ? Had I but a weapon, methinks, 
I would fight better than any one of you." They gave no heed to her words. 
Freydis sought to join them, but lagged behind, for she was not hale; she 
followed them, however, into the forest, while the Skrellings pursued her ; 
she found a dead man in front of her ; this was Thorbrand, Snorri's son, 
his skull cleft by a flat stone ; his naked sword lay beside him ; she took it 
up, and prepared to defend herself with it. The Skrellings then approached 
her, whereupon she stripped down her shift, and slapped her breast with the 
naked sword. At this the Skrellings were terrified and ran down to their 
boats, and rowed away. Karlsefni and his companions, however, joined her 
and praised her valor. Two of Karlsefni's men had fallen, and four of the 
Skrellings. Karlsefni's party had been overpowered by dint of superior num- 
bers. They now returned to their dwellings, and bound up their wounds, and 
weighed carefully what throng of men that could have been, which had seemed 
from the land ; it now seemed to them, that there could have been but the 
one party, that which came from the boats, and that the other troop must 
have been an ocular delusion. The Skrellings, moreover, found a dead man, 
and an axe lay beside him. One of their number picked up the axe, and 
struck at a tree with it, and one after another [they tested it], and it seemed 
to them to be a treasure, and to cut well ; then one of their people hewed at 
a stone and broke the axe ; it seemed to him of no use since it would not 
withstand stone, so he cast it down. 

It now seemed clear to Karlsefni and his people that although the country 
thereabouts was attractive, their life would be one of constant dread and 
turmoil by reason of [the hostility of] those who dwelt there before, so they 
forthwith prepared to leave, and determined to return to their own country. 
They sailed to the northward off' the coast, and found five Skrellings, clad in 
skin-doublets, lying asleep near the sea. There were vessels beside them, 
containing animal marrow, mixed with blood. Karlsefni and his company 
concluded that they must have been banished from their own land. They 
put them to death. They afterwards found a cape, upon which there was a 
great number of animals, and this cape looked as if it were one cake of dung, 
by reason of the animals which lay there during the winter. They now 
arrived again at Straumfiord 

It will be instructive to consider tliis return journey first and in 
reverse order. The nearest point down the coast from Straiuney 
recorded by the saga is of course the headland covered by the animals. 
No doubt thev were seals, for no land animals would conoresfate in 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK I27 

such numbers in such a place. At the mouth of the Bay of Fundy on 
one of the Tusket Islands Champlain in 1604 " found the shore 
completely covered with sea wolves," his name for the queer creatures, 
which still are fairly common in the region. It is not surprising that 
Thorfinn should find a little below Grand Manan what the Frenchman 
afterward found a little above. But this would be a much more 
likely spectacle in the cold waters of the upper Maine coast than 
farther southward. Any one of the jutting rock-islands or pro- 
montories north of Casco Bay might probably answer. 

The three Skrellings were found before finding the seal as the party 
came northward, so they must have been farther south. " Lying 
asleep near the sea " gives the idea of a smooth beach, and would 
belong rather to southern or middle Maine or some lower point, 
though not inevitably. Their " food " was perhaps rather a relish, 
for Strachey tells us : " Nottowene groweth as our bents do in 
meadows, the seed of which is not unlike to rye though somewhat 
smaller ; these they use for a dainty bread buttered with deer suet," ' 
This may be the earliest record of buttered rice cakes. 

Their costume is more to the present purpose, buckskin jackets 
being Indian attire wherever not discarded for coolness. Champlain 
observed in this matter an interesting distinction between the regions 
above and below Cape Ann — the former being chilled by the northern 
current, the latter warmed by the Gulf Stream, so that the waters of 
the two shores of the projecting land are still recognized by residents 
as of dififerent temperatures. Writing of Nauset and other more 
southern points visited in 1605," he says ; " All these people from the 
Island Cape (Cape Ann) wear neither robes nor furs except very 
rarely, moreover their robes are made of grasses and hemp, scarcely 
covering- the body and coming down only to their thighs." Ordinarily, 
he reports, they wore only " a small piece of leather, so likewise the 
women, with whom it comes down a little lower behind than tlie men, 
all the rest of the body being naked." The next year at Chatham 
Harbor in this region " some five or six hundred savages " came to 
see him, " all naked except " that " small piece of doe or sealskin. 
The women are also naked. They wear their hair carefully combed 
and twisted. Their bodies are well proportioned, both men and 
women, and their skin olive-colored." He has already told of the 
robes worn in July at Saco near the least chilly corner of Maine, but 



' W. Strachey: The Historic of Travaile into Virginia, p. 118. 
-Voyages of Champlain. Original Narratives of Early American History, 
P- I?,- 



128 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS \^0L. 59 

of course above the Cape, which were all the villagers had to sell, 
" for they preserve only such furs as they need for their garments." 
He also mentions " robes and furs," and no nakedness, at points far- 
ther north. It is like comparing the costumes of a temperate and a 
tropical zone, though of course the real difference was much less. 

It is not denied that Verrazano tells of visits by deerskin clad 
" Kings " in Narragansett Bay, nor that Champlain says of the 
Nauset women " When they came to see us they wore robes which 
were open in front. I saw among other things a girl with her hair 
very neatly dressed with a red-colored skin and bordered on the upper 
part with little shell beads." But full dress is never a daily habit 
at all hours nor a measure of climatic requirements ; and a jacket 
open in front plus a bead-trimmed turban, with nothing more above 
the waist, can hardly be called overwarm in the way of a visiting 
costume. 

The precise border-line between the regions of habitual clothing 
and approximate nudity (for everyday wear) may have shifted a little 
during the six centuries between the dates of Thorfinn and Champlain 
by reason of the descent and dwindling of Cape Cod and possible con- 
sequent changes in the course and interaction of oceanic currents. 
But there does not seem to have been much difference during nearly 
four centuries that have followed ; and probably there was little 
before. Whether the New Hampshire and lower Maine coast were 
a little warmer or a little chillier in 1003 than in 1605 or 1911, it is 
altogether likely that the buckskin-shirted victims died above Cape 
Ann, though perhaps below the Kennebec. At a later period this 
would be the place to find Almachouqui Algonquians ; and perhaps 
this is the best guess we can make about them ; but it remains a guess 
only. 

On the earlier downward passage to Hop, Thorfinn would seem 
to have briefly followed the coast, say as far as Mount Desert, and 
then struck across the Gulf of Maine, thus sailing chiefly on a more 
eastern course than if he had followed the shore all the way. This 
crossing might be to or around Cape Cod, or, less probably, to lower 
Maine, pjirds in migration during two seasons,^ and other signs not 
to be missed by the watchfulness of a very well-skilled early naviga- 
tor, would have set him on that more direct water-road. Even the brief 
tracing of the nearer shore would not necessarily be carried into 
practice, for he had nothing to gain by it, aiming so far away. 



^ See account by Columbus of his first voyage for the aid thus given the 
Genoese in finding the Azores. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 1 29 

The choice of routes has always existed, and was promptly made 
known to every explorer. Hudson seems to have cut across from the 
Penobscot to Nantucket. Champlain tells us of the expedition in 
1606: "It was decided to continue the voyage along the coast," ^ 
but " it would have been much better to cross from where we were 
directly to Mallebarre ( Nauset), the route being already known, and 
then use our time in exploring" as far as the fortieth degree or farther 
south." How they learned that route is not clear, for their previous 
voyage to and from the same point had been strictly along shore or 
from headland to headland. But they had at least the same means of 
information as Thorfinn, and the course suggested by Champlain is 
almost exactly one which we have conjectured for the earlier navi- 
gator, though a change of angle would have taken him to Boston 
instead, or even to Portsmouth. 

There is another consideration which perhaps has never before 
been presented. The natives who fought with them at Hop did not 
attack them at Straumfiord after their return. There is no indication 
that they were followed at all. Doubtless they could not be, if they 
sailed out of sight at the start, afterward passing only from one 
headland to another. But if the voyage had been for a hundred miles 
only, the savages would have found them out and tried to take 
revenge — a matter of imperative duty and personal enjoyment for 
most wild Indians. 

There is another clue. The saga, as already quoted, relates a 
subsequent expedition of Thorfinn with one ship, around Cape Breton 
Island to a river flowiing from east to west, where Thorvald, the helms- 
man was slain by a '* one footer " or " Uniped." We are told " They 
concluded that the mountains of Hop and those which they had now 
found formed one chain (or were the same)," and this appeared to 
be so, because they were about an equal distance removed from 
Straumfiord in either direction. They intended to explore all the 
mountains, those which were at Hop, and those which they discovered. 
They sailed back and passed the third winter at Straumfiord." The 
intention to " explore all the mountains " is not in the Saga of 
Thorfinn Karlsefni, but in the parallel Saga of Eric the Red (A. M. 
557), as given by Mr. Reeves's notes, and the estimate of equal dis- 
tance is in the former only. It sounds authentic, but merely as a sailor's 
guess. 

It must mean sailing distance, for they were not given to guessing 
at overland air-lines, which they would never follow ; but measured 
by " doegr " of water travel. Without knowing which river is meant, 

' Voyages of Champlain, Orig. Narr. of Early Amer. Hist., p. 81. 



130 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

and just how loosely they made the comparison, it is impossible to 
estimate more nearly. The application of the distance measure as a 
means of identification is not obvious unless the elevations were 
thought of as visible from both sides of a peninsula. This would put 
Hop in Nova Scotia as Dr. Storm tried to do ; but the climate, the 
absence of large wild grapes and the fact that Hop was a long way 
below Straumey (Grand Manan) all forbid. Moreover the highest 
elevations in Nova Scotia, the Cobequid hills, though doubtless visible 
from the Gulf side, have only a maximum height of i loo feet ; and are 
a long way from the Atlantic shore, with, also in part, the upper 
arms of the Bay of Fundy between. If we carry the mountains in 
question up to the lower ridge of the western horn of Cape Breton, 
we pack nearly all the sites of the saga impossibly near to each other, 
we dispense with the distinctive violent currents of Straumey and 
the pleasing conditions of Hop and we make the interval so slight 
that the party might have walked easily across or sent messengers, 
and could not possibly have felt themselves astray in a remote and 
dangerous region as they did. Also the Uniped or his friends would 
have followed them ; but nobody menaced them on Straumey nor in 
their mainland home on the shore of the bay beyond Straumfiord, so 
far as we know. It must not be overlooked, however, that the state- 
ment of distances from Straumfiord occurs in one version only and 
may be a conjectural explanation by some saga-man of several cen- 
turies later. 

Of course there must have been something unique about this one- 
footer, who fled so fast after shooting so deadly. Perhaps he was a 
wandering Eskimo with a kayak hidden in that '* creek " where he 
vanished. If he sprang into that odd little craft and shot out of sight 
with the tapering rear end of the boat reaching back from his waist, 
and if this were their first clear view of him after woodland glimpses, 
the picture might have impressed them in that way, making them 
hurry out of a land of sorcery and death. 

Lescarbot,' after describing a kayak as " all covered with leather " 
except " one hole in the midst where the man putteth himself on his 
knees," adds very appositely : " I believe that the fables of the sirens 
and mermaids come from the dunces esteeming that they were fishes, 
both men and women." In other words, he recognized that the rear 
part of the kayak might well be taken for a single member, a tail. 
If an Eskimo thus ensconced may be taken for a merman, why not 
for a " one-footer? " At least, I am not aware of any other explana- 
tion which is equally reasonable. 



Nova Francia. Erondelle's transl., p. 231. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK I3I 

It is interesting to follow these early visitors in even their slight 
exploration of the shore of that vast Gulf of St. Lawrence, which, with 
the Uniped, so weighed on their disquieted fancy ; but we cannot 
gather anything as to distance or previous locality more than has 
been stated already. The calculation or conjecture simply bears out 
the statement that " they sailed for a long time '' in their previous 
nearly equal journeying across the Gulf of Maine. 

The commendations of their second Wineland home — " the country 
was attractive," *' every brook was full of fish," " no snow whatever," 
and the like — may be taken with a slight allowance for hyperbole in 
matters of detail. Why should not these Norsemen speak a little 
loosely in praising, as well as other people? Many brooks, if not 
all, are really crowded with some kinds of fish in the spawning season 
along the coast. Yellow perch were formerly dipped out of them 
in quantities east of the Chesapeake ; herring are often snagged 
by the hook or scooped up with the dip-net when they throng the 
water at the Little Falls of the Potomac, and alewives are said to 
run in multitudes up Narragansett Bay. The special method of 
catching flounders (which hug the bottom) in pits between tides is 
said by Munro's History of Bristol ' to be still in practice there. As 
to the game. I was told of several recent instances of deer being 
seen near Mount Hope, and the region must once have been a hunter's 
paradise. There are years when, by all accounts, hardly any snow 
falls in this neighborhood, and Thorfinn may have happened on one 
of these. 

The winter-grazing of stock has been claimed in one of the sagas for 
an especially bountiful field — the prize of a murderous controversy — 
in Iceland itself. More precisely, a recent writer ^ bears witness : 

The Faroe Islands, surrounded by rocky barriers and dangerous whirlpools, 
are Hke those dragon-guarded islands of fable upon which, when the circle of 
enchantment was passed, the invader found pleasant gardens and balmy airs. 
.... The air of the islands is mild the year round, so that even in winter cattle 
and sheep are herded without shelter, and snow so seldom lies upon the land 
that the grazing is practically uninterrupted. 

From this to the " absolutely no snow " of the saga is no great 
interval. Perhaps in all such cases we should suspect a slight 
involuntary " diminution of the record." 

This winter grazing, as a ranchman of the far northwest informs 
me, is practised even in Alberta, where the weather varies quite 
suddenly from Arctic severity to a very trying heat and moisture. 

^W. H. Munro : History of Bristol, R. I., p. 22. 
*E. M. Bacon: Henry Hudson, p. 112. 



132 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

On Nantucket, which is bleak in winter, sheep are often left thus 
uncared for, as well as on both sides of Xarragansett Bay, according 
to the correspondence appended to Rafn's huge Latin book. Also, 
the Chincoteague ponies of the ^Maryland and Mrginia shore have 
supported themselves independently for much more than a century, 
though there is some zero weather in most winters, if only for a day 
or two. The question is one of food rather than temperature, and 
there is usually food for ruminants in the marshes. When the coast 
line of Narragansett and Massachusetts Bays was lower than now we 
may suppose that marsh-grazing was much more plentiful. 

There is a plain intention in this part of the saga to contrast the 
conditions of their northern and southern Wineland homes in the 
months that try all resources. Champlain ' does the same as between 
the same localities. Besides liis statement that no one would foresee 
the severity of the St. Croix winter from the summer of that region 
(compare with the saga) he says that the winter life of the few 
Indians there " seems a very miserable one." He tells of really 
murderous hardships endured by his own companions. But at 
Nauset he was told that the snow fell only to the depth of a foot or 
less, and he adds ; " I conclude that this region is of moderate tempera- 
ture and the winter not severe." Now the Nauset Indians were close 
neighbors and allies of those about Massachusetts and Narragansett 
Bays and their conditions must have been nearly identical. 

As to the delightfulness of the Narragansett country we have 
Verrazano's panegyric of nearly a hundred years before, which de- 
clares that it will produce anything: also the commendation of many 
later writers and the plain testimony of the land and water themselves. 

Thorfinn and his party met their first grape-vines and wild grain 
at Hop, so far as we know, for we can hardly count the plants which 
Haki and Haekia may have reached in their dubious southern excur- 
cion. The impression was great and immediate. We are told " They 
found self-sown wheat fields on all the land there wherever there 
were hollows and wherever there was hilly ground there were vines." 
Not grain nor grapes at that season, for it was spring, and no inter- 
polator has been at work here. The statement would have fitted many 
places in southern New England, so far as the vines are concerned, 
and one place about as well as another. As already explained, it would 
not fit any more northern coast region. 

Three grains have been called " wheat " in America, which are 
not reallv so. Prof. Fernald's ' Elymus arenariiis ( Ivme grass, strand 



' Voyages of Champlain : Orig. Narr. of Early Amcr. Hist., pp. 25-96. 
'Fernald: The Plants of X'inland. Rhodora, Feb. 1910. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 1 33 

wheat, or " strand oats ") has had many names. It is a botanical 
curiosity in northern New England and the Maritime Provinces ; 
rather plentiful along the sea shore of Labrador ; and perhaps even 
yet used a little in Iceland. But why should these northern people 
announce as a novelty and a godsend what they already had at home ? 
Besides, it will not go with the grapes at all. And to make Labrador 
do duty for Wineland as well as Helluland and Markland is really 
asking too much of a poor and distressful region. 

Maize, or our Indian corn, originated — according to Dr. Harsh - 
berger's very careful and valuable investigations ' — in the uplands of 
central Mexico ; whence it has been carried north and south a long 
way, everywhere calling for the care of man. Dr. Rafn supposed that 
it might have been found wild in Rhode Island, but that is out of the 
cjuestion. Leon, Mexico, would be the nearest possible point. A 
grain accidentally dropped by us may spring up, and if it be early in 
the season, may produce grain, but that, if it falls again, will die dur- 
ing the winter. This is true from Maryland northward, at the least ; 
for Zed mays is an upland tropical exotic and helpless among us while 
untended. 

It may have reached and passed the Bay of Fundy, for Lescarbot ' 
speaks of agriculture as formerly practised by the Micmac. It was 
doubtless receding when found by Champlain ^ at Saco in 1605, for 
on the Kennebec the Indians had told him of its cultivation along that 
part of the coast a little earlier. There is the same story to tell 
of Hochelaga* (Montreal), where Cartier found it plentifully in 
1535, yet whence it was driven, before the next European visit, with 
its Huron planters. The predatory habits of idler savages counted 
for more than the rigor of the climate in fixing boundaries. Yet there 
is no doubt that it needs a hot and rather long summer to really 
thrive and yield well. 

One would hardly expect it to be called " wheat," but men often 
name by analogy, not by supposed identity ; as in the familiar in- 
stances of the tulip-tree " poplar," our robin, which is a migratory 
thrush, the ruffed grouse, which is a partridge in some States and a 
pheasant in others, and the " bobwhite," which is called a quail wher- 

' J. W. Harshberger : Maize. A Botanical and Economical Study. University 
of Pennsylvania Publications, 1893. 

' Nova Francia : Erondelle's transl. 

^Voyages of Champlain. Orig. Narr. of Early Amer. Hist., p. 60. 

* He had previously seen the grain, as food, near the mouth of the St. Law- 
rence and called it "millet as large as peas." A little earlier he had met the 
wild rice on the Southern Shore of the Gulf, noting that it was 'like rye." 



134 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

ever it is not (more accurately) called a partridge. Similarly Cartier 
called this grain millet. 

So Strachey's ' Virginia tells us: 

The natives here have a kind of Ti'hcai which they call poketawes, as the West 
Indians call the same maize. The form of it is a man's tooth, somewhat thicker, 
for the preparing of the ground for which they use this manner. He then 
proceeds to describe girdling the forest trees, killing the roots with fire, grubbing 
up the dead stumps next year, planting three or five grains of zvheat and one or 
three of beans in the ashes and decayed wood, the hills being four or five 
feet apart, weeding with hoes, hilling and the final processes of pulling and 
preparation, with a word also for green roasting ears. 

Champlain more briefly describes the same process in New England, 
specifying some additional tools. 

So " corn " may be " wheat " ; but the real crux is in the word 
" unsown," evidently meaning wild, spontaneous. Dr. Fiske thought 
the Norsemen, seeing the small amount of work required, considered 
it practically so ; but the above abstract of procedure ought to dispose 
of this rather curious fancy, which would not have occurred to him if 
he had raised corn on a wooded hillside experimentally in the Indian 
way. Besides, though a wheat-field resembles a natural field or 
patch of low-gTOwing wild grain, a cornfield is obviously artificial. 
Dr. Fiske says that it was naturally noticed by Thorfinn's people, 
being one of the first objects to attract the attention of Champlain. 
But Champlain's first observation is : " They till and cultivate 

the soil. I landed to observe their tillage We saw their 

Indian corn, which they raise in gardens," and again, " before reach- 
ing their cabins we entered a field planted with Indian corn." When- 
ever he mentions this plant or its grain, it is unequivocally as an 
attendant on human homes and the product of human labor. 

No doubt the Norsemen would have done likewise, if " Indian 
corn " were the " wheat " which they found ; but there is not a word 
in the sagas to indicate any sign or product of agriculture past or 
present — even of the " pulse " which Verrazano found the Narragan- 
sett natives cultivating, whatever he may have meant. 

This interesting omission of the saga would have a negative value 
in determining the general location of Hop, if we knew that corn 
was then raised in any particular region which Thorfinn might have 
reached. But the chances are that it had not yet entered New England 
from bevond the Hudson. It was there in the earlv seventeenth 



'W. Strachey: The Historic of Travaile into Virginia, p. 116. Cf. Lescarbot : 
Nova Francia. Erondelle's transl., p. 98. "A loaf of bread made with the wheat 
called mahiz or mais and in these our parts Turkey or Saracen wheat." 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK I35 

century, and perhaps even in 1500; but this leaves a margin of five 
centuries for its advent. Even if it were plentiful in 1000 a little 
beyond the x\lleg;heny Mountains, it might not have crossed them. 
We do not know how fast it was carried, nor what conditions favored 
and what opposed it. 

The wild rice naturally grows in wet " hollows,'' a very significant 
word in the saga. There are square miles of it along almost every one 
of the Maryland rivers. In the northwest it is equally plentiful and 
put to better use. Indian wars have been waged for the best gather- 
ing grounds. Many thousands of Indians depend in some degree on 
it for subsistence. The tending and gathering of it runs close to 
agriculture, so elaborate a system has developed — very fully set forth 
in the memoir of Dr. Jenks.' 

In its later stages it does not greatly resemble wheat, but when 
young there is a decided resemblance to the ordinary unbotanic eye, 
though its tint is softer and more luxuriant, making its great low 
fields a conspicuous feature of our spring landscapes. There is 
plenty of it in Texas, and thence all the way north as far as the low 
sandy typically American coast line extends ; also farther north, 
where proper surface conditions obtain, even to a high latitude. 
It is equally at home, equally abundant, in Maryland and Manitoba. 
In " The Backwoods of Canada " Mrs. Traill reports " When seen 
from a distance they (the wild rice beds) appear like low green islands 
on the lakes." But they do not need continually even partial submer- 
gence, being only a little more nearly aquatic than cultivated rice, 
which must have the water let in now and then. I have tramped 
often about and upon the wild rice roots, after the birds that fatten 
almost absurdly on this grain, which is " like rye " as to height and 
some other characteristics in full plant-growth as Cartier says. 

Climate and other conditions exclude perhaps all the territory north 
of Cape Ann, but hardly any place below it, near the coast. We must 
look next to the requirements of Hop's topography as set forth in the 
saga. 

The general meaning of the word is a loch or small bay. The 
map of Iceland " shows the particular Hop which Thorfinn most likely 
had in mind and thus illustrates the description. It is a lake not 
verv far from his home, connected bv a strait to the broad bav Huna- 



'A. E. Jenks : The Wild Rice Gatherers of the Upper Lakes. Nineteenth 
Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol., part 2, p. 1013 et seq. 

^W. G. Collingwood and J. Stefansson: A Pilgrimage to the Saga-Steads 
of Iceland. But this does not show the sea connection made plain by larger 
maps. 



136 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

floi running- in from the sea. This strait or channel is practically a 
lower reach of the main river which flows down into the lake. There 
is also a tributary river or more than one which might be disregarded. 
Some of the maps seem to indicate that there would probably be a 
shoal or bar in the strait or river between bay and sea. All this is in 
accord with the words of the saga, concerning the American Hop 
which they visited and named. 

Some additional facts are mentioned. Indians rounded a cape in 
approaching " from the south." There were hills nearby and crags 
a little way up the river. There was a point or cape at the entrance 
to the bay. There were flats or hollows for the wild rice, as already 
noticed. It will be seen that there are many requirements. We 
simply cannot find anything to fit them even plausibly south or west 
of Narragansett Bay. Is there anything like Hop between it and 
Cape Ann? Or rather was there any such Hop there in 1004? 

Professor Horsford thought he found an eligible Hop in the Back 
Bay of Boston Harbor ; also the delightful anchorage of Verrazano, 
where a fleet might be safe when storms do blow. But in A'errazano's 
time there was no such bay ; far less in Thorfinn's. 

As previously stated, the Superintendent of the U. S. Coast and 
Geodetic Survey informs me that the oldest chart to which he has 
access gives two fathoms for the ruling depth of the channel leading 
into the Back Bay and shows its flats without depth marks. Yet 
they may not have been wholly bare at low water, for they show on 
the chart like those of Dorchester, which are marked for four feet. 
This chart was drawn for the British government in the latter part 
of the eighteenth century. Obviously a fleet would have been sorely 
put to it for room in 1800; how then in 1523, allowing for the sub- 
sidence of the coast ? In Thorfinn's time if not in Verrazano's, there 
can have been no more than a river winding through meadows all 
the way down to the harbor. This vanishing of the Back Bay Hop 
makes any comment on the lack of elevations and crags beside the 
river seem rather superfluous. 

Dr. Raf n ^ was so absurdly wrong as to so many things — in 
spite of the real service he rendered — that they will reflect in some 
minds injuriously on one point, as to which he may happen to be right. 
That is, the identification of Mount Hope Bay, Rhode Island, with 
Thorfinn's Hop. It is a beautiful sheet, the depth of which in some 
parts is a guaranty against its entire absence then. 

Taunton River flows into it at the upper end or side. From the 
lower end or opposite side two channels extend to the sea. One is 



' Antiquitates Americanae. 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS 



VOL. 59, NO. 19. PL. 10 




MOUNT HOPE BAY 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA P.ABCOCK 1 37 

known as Sakonnet River ; the other as the eastern channel of 
Narragansett Bay. Aqnidneck or Rhode Island lies between them. 
Bristol Narrows connects the above channel with Mount Hope Bay. 
Mount Hope is a little above the narrows near the bay side and affords 
a fine view over nearly the whole Narragansett region. 

It has been objected that there are no bars, that a fleet may pass 
in without any difliculty. But the objectors lose sight of the different 
conditions probably obtaining then. No one can say just what the 
change in elevation has been during nine hundred years ; yet there are 
some measures which have been taken recently, and there are earlier 
indications. The Dighton Rock inscription in Taunton River is wholly 
overflowed in ordinary tides : it was partly overflowed in high tides 
about 1700 when Cotton Mather wrote. We must suppose that it was 
entirely free of the tide and in no apparent danger when the figures 
were carven. Other inscribed rocks give like testimony. "Sir. Davis's 
marsh experiments elsewhere cited are quite conclusive. Dr. McGee 
tells me that the depression at Atlantic City is found to be probably 
from two to four feet per century. It seems to be about that for Ocean 
City, Maryland, a point which I have watched for more than twenty- 
five years. A proven descent has occurred at New York and in 
Boston Harbor during the past seventy years. Of course we cannot 
be quite sure that this existed in older times, for reasons already given, 
but continuity of movement seems more probable than cessation, when 
there is no apparent reason for the latter. As we know of a sufficient 
cause for the continuous lowering of the southern New England 
coast, and that it has really descended during several centuries, we 
may at least be pretty sure that it was higher in the year 1004 than it 
is now : but by how many feet who can say ? 

Of course the action of tides and river-currents, in scouring out 
and in depositing, must also be kept in mind. For example, though 
parts of Mount Hope Bay near that hill are deep, the remainder of it 
seems to have been silted up by Taunton River and other tributaries, 
the soundings running below twenty feet. The shallows have been 
dredged through to make a clear channel. To get the soundings of 
the year 1004. we must suppose all this accumulation removed and 
the old elevation restored. Whether the net results would leave a 
Mount Hope Bay approaching its present size may be questioned ; but 
there would be at least a small bay, unless the depression has amounted 
to seventy feet, which seems unlikely. A very much less descent 
would, however, make a bar in a curved line across the main channel 
where a vessel struck in 19 12 ; would close the strait now called 



138 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

Sakonnet River : and would leave the Eastern Channel with its lateral 
branch, called Bristol Narrows, a good title to be called a river, as 
the popular equivalent for a strait. The steep Fall River hills would 
supply the crags called for by the saga, and the upper end of what is 
now Aquidneck Island would be the point on the southern side of the 
entrance, which the Indians passed in paddling from the south and 
returning the same way. There would be plenty of marshland for 
the wild rice. 

It fits well in the main, but of course the rest would go for nothing 
without a loch-like bay of some size ; and this item looks more doubt- 
ful than if the present depth were generally greater : yet that objection 
is probably not fatal. Verrazano seems to descrilie a transitional 
condition of Narragansett Bay, when its mouth did not freely let 
in so great a volume of water as now before the sweep of the storms. 
Curiously he does not allude to Mount Hope Bay ; but he does not 
allude to ?\Iount Hope either ; so perhaps his trips by land and water 
were rather to the westward, or those who doubt his interesting story 
may be right though in most of its items there is a notable veri- 
similitude. Certainly the hill was there, small but dominating the 
low landscape. 

The name Mount Hope is somewhat mysterious, but probably a 
corruption of Montaup; which Mr. Mooney does not consider iden- 
tical with Montauk, Manotuck or Montanutt, defined by Trumbull's ^ 
dictionary as meaning in substance a place of outlook. Montauk is 
at least applied to several hills, and its meaning would seem to fit 
the present one well enough. But the words may not be related. 

Now Mimro's History of the town of Bristol, before referred to, 
a work rather notable for care in collecting local data from deeds and 
records, declares in a note that Haup and Montaup were applied 
by Indians to this region when the white settlers came. He oilers 
the solution that the Norsemen left the name Hop, which the Indians 
turned to Haup and the English to Hope as we now write it. He 
thinks two or three Norsemen may have remained and married among 
the Indians, thus anchoring the name ; an improbable supposition, 
considering the hostility of these natives, and one for which we have 
no basis whatever. The true explanation of the origin of the word 
must be left to our Indian linguists, who, however, are more con- 
versant with surviving languages. No argument can be safely 
founded on it in the present state of our knowledge. 



'J. H. Trumbull: Indian Names of Places in and on the Borders of 
Connecticut. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 1 39 

As against Mount Hope Bay, it must be said that the saga rather 
leaves the impression of an eastward-facing, nearly land-locked 
expanse, reached by natives who came up along the coast from the 
south ; and that there is no reference to any course but a southern 
one in reaching it from Straumey, nor any but a northern one in 
returning. It is true that the narrative might have omitted, as not 
very important, the westward and eastward turns in rounding the 
corner of New England ; but a spot on the eastern front of the latter 
has the advantage of requiring no such explanation. On the other 
hand, sites along this coast lack noticeable hills. Just what weight 
should be attached to each of these conflicting considerations is hard 
to say, but thus far no other Hop' has been suggested which seems 
more plausible than Mount Hope Bay, Rhode Island. 

i6._CONCERNING THE NATIVES 

In The Discovery of America, Dr. Fiske ^ has laid stress on the 
ignorance of eleventh century Europeans as to people so unsophis- 
ticated that they would not understand the qualities of a steel imple- 
ment or the relative value of red rags and costly furs and who could 
be thrown into panic bv the bellowing of a bull. Possibly the argu- 
ment is pressed overmuch, for the civilized peoples of antiquity had, 
and transmitted, some knowledge of interior Africa and other outlying 
rudimentary regions ; but, however qualified, it adds a little cumulative 
testimony to the genuine character of the saga. Also, these Skrellings 
have been found interesting by many writers and overhauled in every- 
way, to see what they can tell us, for one thing, about the location of 
Hop. 

In particular, controversy has busied itself with the question, were 
they Indian or Eskimo? The case for the latter rests mainly on the 
name Skrelling or Skrseling, which is known to have been applied to 
them centuries afterward, the " skin-boats," the slings, and certain 
physical characteristics. Its weakness lies chiefly in the absence 
of clothing at Hop; of dogs and sleds, of winter traveling, of distinc- 
tively Eskimo appliances such as the kayak and harpoon, and of any 
indication of skill in carving ; also in the fact that everything said of 
the Skrellings would apply to some Indians, who might have been 
there. 

We have touched lightly before on the question of boundaries, 
vet mav still add a word. We know the Eskimo only as an Arctic 
littoral people, ill content with a milder habitat and not thriving 



' \'ol. I, pp. 180-185. 



140 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

in it. All accounts go to prove them so wonderfully skilled in 
making the most of their situation that they must have belonged to 
it from rather ancient times though not necessarily in the New World. 
Rink ' argued for their development from some Indian tribe and their 
gradual movement to the northern coast under pressure, there to be- 
come modified by circumstances and polar weather. Thalbitzer,' 
examining the question more recently, finds nothing conclusive in the 
reasoning. It seems at least as likely that they were here before the 
Indians, at least before the ancestors of any of those stocks of North 
American Indians which concern us or they may have come in after 
them from Asia as some suppose. They have often clashed in defence 
with Athapascan or Algonquian tribes, sometimes, though rarely, 
have taken the aggressive; and occasionally a particular district has 
been alternately occupied or overrun by one or the other contestant. 
But in the main it must be said that the Eskimo have been content 
to hold their ground along shores not desired by other people, and 
are to be considered as doing so from choice, not because driven 
thither and held there by enemies. Woods and warmth have never 
tempted them in historic times. While the ice-cap border was moving 
northward, we may suppose a slow shifting of their southern limit in 
the same direction. After the ice-cap was quite gone from the main- 
land, they dwelt still on those northern shores which gave them the 
life that they know. Sometimes they moved southward along these 
shores a little way, regaining regions of their former occupancy as to 
the coast-line only. 

Packard "* says " When the French first frequented the coast, it 
was in possession of the Equimaux as far up as the end of Anticosti. 
Apparently they had not been long in possession." They seem also 
to have been contending for a foothold on Newfoundland, but it 
was never more than precarious. There are also a few slight and 
doubtful indications that parties of them landed on the northern 
shore of New Brunswick. It is their utmost southward point, even 
of reconnoissance or exploration, so far as we know ; and if Professor 
Packard's ^ inference be right, they would have been more remote 
before the movement of which he tells us. Undoubtedly they may 
have come southward before ; but thev would not wish to come far. 



' H. J. Rink: On the Descent of the Eskimo. Arctic Papers for the Expe- 
dition of 1875, pp. 271-273. Journ. Anthr. Inst., 1872. 
' W. Thalbitzer: The Eskimo Language, p. 21. 
•'' Packard : The Coast of Labrador, p. 260. 
* W. Thal1)itzer : The Eskimo Language, p. 20. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK I4I 

this would be hardly practicable ; and there is not the least sign that 
they came at all. If we consider the Skrellings to be Eskimo, we must 
suppose Hop to be in Labrador or Newfoundland, where there are 
no grapes and no balmy winters and where the coastal geography of 
the sagas fails to apply. The Eskimo are all north of Hamilton Inlet 
now. 

The earlier students of the subject were dominated by the idea 
that " Skrelling " must mean Eskimo. Putting this with the evidence 
for a warm Hop, they got some curious results. Thus Schoolcraft,' 
adding yet a little more in the way of assumption, declared that 
successive conquests and revolutions in the Valley of Mexico sent 
corresponding waves of mankind northeastward by way of Tampico, 
till at last they drove out of New England the Skrellings whom the 
Norsemen found there. This may be paired off with the Arthurian 
conquest of Iceland, as a bit of theoretical ballooning. 

Dr. Fiske ' no doubt presents the kernel of the matter in reminding 
all that we do not assert the identity of Fuegians and Australians 
by calling them savages. The meaning of the word (weaklings) 
seems to have been about that among the Norsemen.' We find them 
applying it not only to their Hop visitors, but to the men in " doublets '' 
found at a distant point, and to the bearded Marklander and his com- 
panions, witii no thought of ethnological distinctions, but in mere 
facile disparagement. What else could be their view of the poor 
people who had no ships nor woven fabrics, no jewels nor armor, no 
live stock nor grain, nor steel weapons, nor good tools, nor money, nor 
proper European clothing ; dusky people too, not pleasing in northern 
eyes ? Such were contemptibly insignificant ; it was hardly worth 
while to distinguish differences among them. 

Dr. Nansen may be right in thinking that the name ( like that 
of Finn for Laplanders and. as he points out, two other inferior 
peoples) came to have an implication of mythical beings or of magic ; 
but the fact is irrelevant.* 

The natives who visited them at Hop were their very first speci- 
mens, and the Norsemen fitted the word to them in the spirit which 
applies derogatory nicknames like injun, nigger, dago, and sheeney 
to people despised by the utterer. It was then ready for any others 
of like status, and might even be applied conjecturally. by a loose 



'Schoolcraft: Indian Tribes of the United States. Drake's edition, vol. 6, 
p. 84. 

*J. Fiske: The Discovery of America, pp. 181-185. 

*Fr. Nansen: Eskimo Life. 

*In Northern Mists, vol. 2. pp 11-20. 



14- SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

analogy, in advance of discovery. We can see the process at work 
after a hundred years in the surviving Libellus of the Islendingabok, 
written by Ari the Wise, who was no doubt the best informed 
man in Iceland. Here is the passage : " This country which is called 
Greenland was discovered and colonized from Iceland. Eric the 
Red was the name of the man, an inhabitant of Breidafirth who went 
thither from here and settled at that place which has since been 
called Ericsfirth. He gave a name tO' the country and called it 
Greenland and said that it must persuade men to go thither if the 
land had a good name. They found there, both east and west in the 
country, the dwellings of men and fragments of boats and stone imple- 
ments such that it may be perceived from these that that manner of 
the people had been there who have inhabited Wineland and whom 
the Greenlanders call Skrellings. And this when he set about the 
colonization of the country was 14 or 15 winters before the intro- 
duction of Christianity here in Iceland, according to which a certain 
man who himself accompanied Eric the Red thither, informed Thor- 
kell Gellison." 

Broken boats, tools, and dwellings defined as savages (Skrellings) 
the former occupants, who had probably withdrawn to the north- 
ward ' or kept at home there, refraining from southward journeys 
and therefore they were presumably like the other Skrellings already 
encountered in Wineland. In other words, the Winelanders were not 
called Skrellings because there were Eskimo already known, but the 
Eskimo, long before they were seen, were called Skrellings by con- 
jecture, because the word had come to Iceland traditionally from 
American adventures then a century old. Of course the two kinds 
of Skrelling (savage) might be utterly dissimilar, according to our 
modern standards. 

Perhaps it was in the twelfth century,' perhaps not till the thirteenth 
century, that Norse hunters in upper Greenland met small " Skrell- 
ings," who used stone knives and whalebone arrowheads — Eskimo 
imdoubtedly — as related by a manuscript discovered in Scotland in 
the nineteenth century.'' The greater Greenland landowners had 
hunting lodges, as we may call them, at the north, and kept ships to 
sail there ; so such contact must happen at last. 

In the year 1266 an expedition was sent to find out about them, 
as before mentioned, and seems to have gone very far north, indeed 



' Fr. Nansen : Eskimo Life, Chap. 5. 

* G. Storm : Studies on the Vineland Voyages. 

^W. Thalbitzer : Eskimo Language, p. 22. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK I43 

nearly to Jones's Sound, judging by its primitive astronomical data ; 
though Thalbitzer ' supposes that they did not pass the site of Uper- 
navik. At all events they found Skrelling houses here and there 
above the region inhabited by white men. 

According to Dr. Storm," the settlers " apparently afterward 
killed them or drove them away when they could." This looks as 
though the colony were expanding in that direction, or the Eskimo 
were beginning an ominous downward movement. 

Professor Olson's preface to Original Narratives, etc., before men- 
tioned, says that " The Speculum Regale was written in Old Norse in 
Norway in the middle of the thirteenth century," that it discusses in 
a dry, matter-of-fact way divers Greenland matters, like insularity, 
the aurora borealis, glaciers, climate, the fauna, exports and imports, 
and the means of human subsistence, but has not a word for the 
Eskimo. Surely the writer knew nothing 'definite about them, 
although some border settler might have been able to tell him. 

It was the year 1337 at the earliest when Ivar Bardsen went with 
a relief expedition to the western settlement, a little too late. His 
narrative, written later in Norway, shows that the Greenland colonists 
can have had no considerable contact with the natives before the 
fourteenth century. The Icelanders can have had no idea of them at 
the time Hauk's book was copied, still less a hundred years earlier 
when the saga was written. Neither Thorfinn, nor the unknown 
saga-man, nor the Lawman Hauk. who gives us the earliest surviving 
manuscript, can reasonably be charged with using Skrelling in the 
special sense of Eskimo. If the Hop natives are to be held Eskimo, it 
must be on other evidence. 

The Saga of Eric the Red (A. AI. 557) says: "They were small 
men and ill looking, and the hair of their heads was ugly. They had 
great eyes and were broad of cheek." The Saga of Thorfinn Karlsefni 
substitutes " swarthy " for " small." The Flateybook Wineland Saga 
states that the native chief was tall and of good figure. 

Stature and comeliness make an uncertain reliance. The Eskimo 
are not all squat people. Those of southern Greenland are said 
to be taller than those in the north. The Long Labrador Trail of 
Dillon Wallace tells us : 

In our old school geograpliies we used to see them pictured as stockily built 
little fellows. In real life they compare well in stature with the white man of the 
temperate zone. With a few exceptions, the Eskimo of Ungava average over 
five feet eight inches in height with some six footers. 



^Op. cit.. p. 23. 

^ Studies on the Vineland Voyages, pp. 307, 370. 



144 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

Concerning the " Northerners," a remote unsophisticated branch of 
the Innuit, occupying the northwestern peninsula of the same main- 
land region, i\Ir. Turner ' informs us : " These people are unusually 
tall and of fine physique. The men are larger than the average white 
man. while the women compare favorably in stature with the women 
of medium height in other countries." E. W. Nelson " says : 

The Malemiit and the people of Kaviak peninsula, including those of the 
islands in Bering Strait, are tall, active, and remarkably well built. Among 
them it is common to see men from five feet ten inches to six feet tall. 

Yet 

The Eskimo from Bering Strait to the lower Yukon are fairly well-built people, 
averaging among the men about five feet two or three inches in height. The 
Yukon Eskimo and those living southward from the river to the Kuskokwim 
are, as a rule, shorter and more squarely built . . . and all of the people in the 
district about Capes Vancouver and Romanzof, and thence to the Yukon 
mouth, ... all are very short. 

Of the Norton Sound Eskimo, Dall ^ writes that he has often seen 
both men and women six feet high and that some of the men arc 
still taller. Also that the men have great strength, one being able to 
take a hundred pound bag of tlour in each hand and another by his 
teeth and walk ofif thus burdened. 

As to the eyes in particular, he reports that they are " small, black 
and almost even with the face," also that the " women are sometimes 
quite pretty." Lieutenant Holm * admits that Eskimo have not large 
eyes, but asserts the same of Indians, disqualifying both ; yet the 
Skrellings were natives of some kind. Captain Robinson.' as quoted 
at second hand by Patterson in his valuable little work, described 
Mary March, a Beothuk prisoner, as having black eyes, " larger and 
more intelligent than those of the Eskimo." The two types were 
neighbors and naturally chosen for comparison by one who knew them 
both. 

Wide divergences are noted in complexion, in physiognomy, in 
hairiness of the face, in the proportions of the body and limbs, 
between the Eskimo of different districts. Thus we have a puzzling 
absence of uniformitv in a race which is considered itnusually 



'The Hudson Bay Eskimo. Eleventh Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol., 1889- 
1890, p. 179. 

-The Eskimo About Bering Strait. Eighteenth Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. 
Ethnol., 1 896- 1 897. pp. 26, 28. 

^W. H. Dall: Alaska, pp. 137-140. 

*A. M. Reeves: The Finding of Wineland the Good. Notes. 

'^Rev. Geo. Patterson: The Beothicks of Newfoundland, p. 146. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK I45 

homogeneous. Now shall we say that the Skrellings were Eskimo, 
or not Eskimo, because they were small, or dark, or big'-eyed, or 
ugly-haired, or what you will? 

It is equally true that some of the greatest contrasts of the human 
race are found among Indians. As to stature, the Patagonians and 
Fuegians, near neighbors, offer an almost classic example. But we 
do not need to go so far afield. The Caddo of Oklahoma, or near it, 
are said to be little men ; the Osage of the same prairie region have 
been called giants even by other Indians. The Zuni are usually 
short ; the Nez Perces often tall. At the east it was the same. The 
Iroquois and some Algonquian tribes towered over their neighbors. 
Strachey ' describes the Susquehannock as " a giant-like people," 
the Wicomico as " of little stature and very rude " ; but they both 
dwelt on rivers emptying into the same generous Chesapeake Bay, 
and their conditions were identical. The few Micmac whom I have 
seen appeared under medium height. The Nanticoke do not greatly 
pass that standard. 

As to the other items, compare this description by A'errazano : ' 

The complexion of these people is black, not much different from that of the 
Ethiopians. Their hair is black and thick and not very long; it is worn tied 
back upon the head in the form of a little tail. In person they are of good 
proportions, of middle stature, a little above our own ; broad across the breast, 
strong in the arms, and well formed in other parts of the body. The only 
exception to their good looks is that they have broad faces ; but not all, for we 
saw many that had sharp ones, with large black eyes and fixed expression. They 
are not very strong in body, but acute in mind, active and swift of foot. 

Here in close juxtaposition we have the breadth of face, which 
Brereton "^ and Gosnold also observed on Cape Cod ; the swarthiness ; 
the large eyes, " middle stature," and such peculiarities of hair as 
might well displease a Norseman or a Celt ; but who will take these 
early Carolinians for Eskimo? On the other hand, he describes the 
Narraganset Indians as tall and 

of very fair complexion ; some of them incline more to a white, others to a 
tawnej' color ; their faces are sharp ; their hair long and black and sharp, their 
expression mild and pleasant, greatly resembling the antique. 

But again he found the Maine Indians " rude and barbarous " and 
" very different." Thev '' made the most brutal signs of disdain." 

Similarly a southwestern Federal judge, lately deceased — a man 
of strong intellect and keen perception, with no theories to sustain — 



'W. Strachey: The Historic of Travaile into \'irginia. p. 41. 
'Translation in Old South Leaflets. 

^J. Brereton: A Briefe Relation of the Discovcrie of the North Part of 
Virginia by Gosnold. The Bibliographer. 1902. p. ;i;i. Old South Leaflets, vol. 5. 



146 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

assured me about four years ago that whether Indians be supe- 
rior or inferior to negroes depends on the particular tribe chosen for 
comparison. He instanced one as composed of " highly civilized 
men " ; another as very low in the human scale ; and they were not 
of those usually presented by way of typical extremes, Incas and 
Fuegians for example. Many tribes, gathered from every quarter, had 
long been within his jurisdiction, and his acquaintance with their 
individual members had been uncommonly close and extended. 

If we turn to trained and eminent ethnologists, we find no stronger 
advocate of Indian unity than Dr. Brinton, author of The American 
Race ; but who can read his summary of the characteristics of South 
American tribes, for example, without feeling that his witnesses turn 
against him ? Some of these people, it appears, are nearly white, 
others nearly black, with a cavalier defiance of latitude and isothermal 
lines in both cases. Here is a bestial-featured tribe, there a noble 
one ; here a tall people, there a horde of dwarfs ; and on the borders 
of humane, ancient, widely extended civilization — or something very 
near it — a mere debris of human derelicts and incapables. Dr. 
Brinton proves that too much has been made of the homogeneity of 
the American Indians. 

As already suggested, the truth seems to be that American Indians, 
when first encountered, comprised more than a few survivals of earlier 
rudimentary peoples often partly assimilated, as well as some intru- 
sive elements, occasionally higher in type and culture and of uncertain 
origin. Furthermore they had developed heterogeneously in diverse 
conditions. They still differ among themselves — considering the 
two American continents together- — in many ways. Yet if we were 
called on to name their most salient and generally characteristic 
features we should all probably select their cheek-bones, color, hair, 
and eyes. It is significant that these were noted particularly by the 
observant Norsemen. That the cheeks are usually prominent rather 
than broad, the eyes conspicuously keen rather than conspicuously 
large, and that swarthy is hardly the best word for the peculiar tint 
of their complexion, are matters of detail, easily variable. Subse- 
quent transmitters would be likely to make a few careless or poetic 
changes, if the original narrators did not ; also the visitors were 
judged by the standard height of the European North, for these Ice- 
landic observers had perhaps never seen a man who was not of the 
white race. If the word " short "' were used, as in one saga, we have 
only to suppose that Indians of the Wicomico pattern stood before 
them ; Micmac visitors might call forth the statement. In all this, 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BAP.COCK I47 

there is nothing- which confines us to the Eskimo, and Httle which 
would fit the Eskimo equally well. 

Hawes ^ says of the Saghalien Gilyak : " I was struck with their 
resemblance to North American Indians, their swarthy features, high 
cheekbones, raven hair and moccasined legs, the impression being 
heightened by their paddling a dug-out canoe." Kennan ' mentions 
the " swarthy " faces of the Kamchatkan Koryak ; adding " their 
high cheekbones, bold black eyes and straight coal-black hair sug- 
gested an intimate relationship to our own Indians." Tlius we have 
two independent observers of diflferent nations instructively selecting 
as Indian the same features as the saga and even using its most 
doubtful adjective. 

The general impression left by their conduct is surely the same. 
Love of bright colors ; improvidence in bargaining ; ^ impulsiveness 
in curiosity, suspicion, alarm, and vindictive retaliation ; readiness to 
discard a tool which they could not understand ; sudden panic, before 
what must have seemed to them an outburst of insanity — all are 
surely unsophisticated Indian in psychology, though they might 
happen to be displayed by Eskimo. The last item is an impressive 
typical example, for all accounts agree that such visitations are 
peculiarly daunting to the red-man, being looked upon as divine or 
diabolical possession, in the ancient way. From Cooper down they 
have been a stock expedient of Indian romance-writers. His " Deer- 
slayer '" presents vividly the consideration accorded by the Iroquois — 
most merciless of all fierce peoples — to even a mild form of dementia. 

On their part the Icelanders behaved better than many later 
colonists ; dealing fairly, after their light, though getting the better 
side of the bargain with these simple folk, and not using their weapons 
except in defense, until after they had lost one of their best men by a 
wanton attack, as it would seem to them, and had been forced to 
abandon their pleasant homes and their hopeful venture. Karlsefni's 
quick-tempered bull was the chief culprit, bringing trouble and loss 
to all human beings concerned. He stands out as one of the few 
quadrupeds which have meddled with history. 

From this episode, common to all these Wineland sagas, it has 
been inferred, not quite convincingly, that these natives had never 
seen a bison. Hence Laing (preface to Heimskringla) believes they 



' C. 11. Hawes: In the Uttermost East, p. 135. 
^G. Kennan: Tent Life in Siberia, p. 171. 

'W. H. Dall : Tribes of the Extreme Northwest, p. 238. ("Apiece of coarse 
cloth for a dressed deerskin".) 



148 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

could hardly be mainland Indians. Fiske replies : " Bisons on the 
Atlantic coast, Mr. Laing? " Now they were found near the sites of 
Washington and Richmond in the early seventeenth century/ hunted 
in the marshes of Georgia long afterward, and not wholly extirpated 
from the Appalachian mountains until 1800 or later ; so that stragglers 
of their advance guard almost certainly reached salt water. But so 
far as concerns New England, Dr. Fiske's note of exclamation may 
well be right, although the Orkneyman's position is not really absurd. 
A straggling bison ' was killed about 1790 or 1800 near Lewisburg on 
the Susquehanna, and there are indications of their former presence 
about as far east at other points. They were plentiful in parts of the 
Pennsylvania mountains, yet it is unlikely that they ever crossed the 
Hudson. 

Moreover, the bison herds came late into the Appalachian region, 
and left early. Shaler's ^ excavations near a Kentucky saltlick showed, 
lowest, a considerable depth of mammoth bones ; then, those of a 
muskox when the glacier front was but little way northward ; finally, 
the bison, with every appearance of recentness. Few of their remains 
are found in even the later mounds of the Mississippi drainage. 
From all indications and with the aid of the best ethnologists, Shaler 
inferred that the culture of these agricultural people and builders of 
the great defensive earthworks was in full flower about the year 1000 
(Leif's date) and that the bison at that time had not crossed the 
^Mississippi, coming eastward, but were all probably still near the 
Rocky Mountains. He suspects them of tempting the mound builders 
afterward out of their incipient civilization and into burning the woods 
to make buffalo pastures. But the menace of these wild herds to the 
hundred acre cornfields, also the attacks of hordes of savages 
traveling with or after them, would perhaps have still more to do 
with the final breaking up. 

How far an acquaintance with bison would prepare the Hop 
natives to receive with equanimity the charge of the settlers' bull 
is a metaphysical question I can not answer. Perhaps they supposed 
his challenge to be incited by their entertainers, especially if the 
Norsemen laughed at them, as we may guess they unwisely did. 
Thus viewed, Indians might see insult, treachery, and deadly danger 



'W. T. Hornaday : The Extermination of the American Bison. Ann. Rep. 
U. S. Nat. Mus., 1887. 

^ Allen: History of the American Bison. U. S. Geol. and Geogr. Survey of 
Colorado (1875), p. 443. 

^Nature and Man in America, pp. 181-186. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA CABCOCK I49 

in it. One cannot be sure that the memory of any wild animal would 
soothe them adequately. 

But they seem to have offered no buffalo robe for sale, such as 
the scouts of De Soto bought in the Carolina mountains, and in view 
of the limitations of period and range above stated, we are no doubt 
safe in acquitting- the Hop Skrellingsof any acquaintance with any 
kind of cattle ; and moose would not help the case at all. 

Indians in general had few metals ; but gold ornaments were 
scattered through the south as far as the outer Bahamas, where 
Columbus found them, and copper in like manner through the north- 
east, being shown to Gosnold ' on Cape Cod in 1620, besides some 
earlier entries. The few survivors of the Roanoke massacre, accord- 
ing to Powhatan (see Strachey), were employed as slaves in beating 
it out for a chief. Some of it may have been mined in the mountains, 
but the chief source of supply regularly worked seems to have been 
the shores of the upper lakes, as the chief source of gold supply was 
probably central Mexico. But the transfer of such articles or 
materials, whether by barter or through migration, must depend on 
intervening peoples, and the conditions of one century are not neces- 
sarily those of another even among uncivilized men. 

The earthwork builders of Ohio might, if they chose, absorb and 
hold most of the southeastern flow of copper until they were driven 
from their strongholds ; whether they were Sioux, Cherokee, Mandan, 
Appalachian, or of the remoter southwest ; whether a temporary 
league of the Algonquians and the Iroquois overcame them, or they 
fell under the attack of hunting Dakota ; and whether they went west- 
ward beyond the Mississippi, or into the mountains as Cherokee, or 
were scattered among many tribes — all debatable hypotheses which 
have been advanced, but need not be rediscussed here ; and we do 
not know when the working began of the meager supplies afterward 
obtained, as we are told, in Virginia and New Jersey. In this view 
of the case, copper would not probably reach New England from any 
quarter by Thorfinn's time. Whatever the reason, the seaboard 
tribes about Hop do not then seem to have possessed it. But this 
does not at all imply any lack of such adornments at that place a few 
centuries later. 

As already noticed, these people apparently wore no garments 
worth mentioning, very likely only Nauset grass aprons or a dimin- 
utive form of breech-clout. Thev can not then have been Eskimo. 



' Brereton's Briefe Relation, before cited. Old South Leaflets ; and The Bibli- 
ographer, 1902, p. 3,3. 



150 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

They did not make any visits in the winter, when the Eskimo prefer 
to journey. They had no sleds, no dogs, no harness, though these 
promptly attracted Frobisher's ' attention in Labrador, and Davis 
tells of fighting ofif the Greenland dogs which the Eskimo set on 
him. Nansen " even lays stress on the use of this method of land 
transportation, as making against the theory of the development of 
these Innuit from the Indians ; adding, " In this the Eskimo more 
resembles the races of the Asiatic polar regions." It is true that dogs 
were not uncommon in many Indian villages as pets or sacrifices, or 
to aid in hunting or serve for food. But these people came to H6p^ 
always by water, apparently from some rather distant point south- 
ward, and on such excursions the dogs would most likely be left 
behind. Besides lack of room in the boats, they might interfere with 
the plans of a war party or even disturb trading. Moreover, early 
travelers often do not mention them, and presumably they were rare 
in some tribes. The Indians had no such imperative need for them 
as the Eskimo, and might be much later in acquiring them along the 
Atlantic coast. We have no real reason to suppose their presence 
among the New England Algonquians in the year 1000, but it would 
be a marvel if they were not then drawing the Eskimo of Labrador, 
and indeed of all quarters, over the snow. 

There is no hint, either, in the saga of the faithful and spirited 
bone-carving and other sculpture and artistry, which made Prof. 
Boyd Dawkins in Cave Hunting conjecturally identify the Innuit with 
the paleolithic European cave-dwellers. Both had the seeing eye 
and the cunning hand, also a sense of the picturesque, along with 
patient industry in embodiment. Our northeastern Indian picture 
makers were infantile and freakish in comparison. The Norsemen 
would neither have heeded nor mentioned such " Skrelling " efforts. 

It may be repeated as important that w-e hear of no kayak, nor 
of any of the accouterments which ordinarily pertained to the kayaker. 
Why should Thorfinn be less impressed by this unique Eskimo craft 
than were Antonio Zeno, Bafiin," and Lescarbot? We have seen 
reason tO' suppose that one Eskimo and his kayak quite appalled 
Thorfinn's party in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Surely the reappear- 
ance of the phenomenon, multiplied, would not have been disregarded 
— whether in confirmation or explanation. By " boats " we must 



^Hakluyt's Principal Voyages (1904), vol. 7, pp. 225. 413. 

''Fr. Nansen: Eskimo Life, p. 8. 

^C. R. Markham : Voyages of Baffin, p. 14. (Catonle's Relation). See also 
Olaus Magnus : A Compendious History, p. 20 (transl. pub. by Streater) ; as 
to Greenland Ijoats "not so much above, as beneath the surface." 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK I5I 

naturally understand open boats, which were all that they had ever 
seen — except in ill-understood fragments on the Greenland shore. 
It is not merely, however, that kayaks would be decked over ; they 
are more of a garment or personal appendage than a mere vehicle 
for water transit. " As a rule each hunter makes his kayak for 
himself, and it is fitted to the man's size just like a garment," ' 
the central " kayak-ring " being a boat-combing and a man's water- 
tight belt in one. The world does not present anything else quite 
like this Eskimo invention, and few of that race on open waters are 
without it. 

If we consider the Skrellings (" weaklings ") of Hop to be Indians, 
the above items offer no difficulty. They went naked or nearly so, 
because the weather was mild, as at Nauset, except in the depth of 
winter. They did not use a harpoon and float, nor carve spirited 
animal figures in bone, because the former did not belong to the 
customs nor the latter to the tendencies and capabilities of their race. 
Probably they had never seen anything so Arctic and vm-Indian as 
a dog-sled or a kayak. But what can be said for an old-time Eskimo 
in Labrador without any of these things ? Yet Professor Fernald, for 
example, seems to think that the Hop Skrellings were Eskimo and 
that Wineland was in Labrador. 

The brandishing of staves (paddles ?) in the direction of the sun's 
course to show amity, or reversely by way of defiance, cannot be called 
indicative of either people. Norse folklore would predispose the 
observers to illusion on such points — witness the direful Moon " of 
Wierd which traveled in the latter fashion about the hall of Frodis- 
water before the eyes of living men and women doomed to ghostly 
hauntings or to death. The normal circuit would bear the contrary 
and conciliatory meaning. Of course Thorfinn and Snorri interpreted 
these movements by the facial expression, the tones, and other indica- 
tions of the mood of the approaching men. Finding themselves 
understood, the latter would emphasize and repeat the gesture, even 
if it were at first accidental, or would naturally reverse it to convey 
a contrary message. But after all the signs may also have been 
customary with them exactly as seen, for these might suggest them- 
selves by the contrast of natural and unnatural in any mind. They 
tell us nothing. 

The native boats came three times, with dramatically presented 
climax. First " nine skin canoes " drawn by mere curiosity ; secondly. 



^Fr. Nansen : Eskimo Life. p. 46. 

'Eyrbyggja Saga. Morris's and Magnusson's translation. 
II 



152 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

" a great number of skin canoes rowing" from the south past the cape, 
so numerous that it looked as if coals had been scattered broadcast 
out before the bay," for they had come to trade and to feel safe in 
trading ; thirdly, " a great multitude of Skrelling boats approaching 
from the south as if a stream were pouring down." 

There may be no significance in the substitution of Skrelling for 
" skin " in the third mention. As they mistook paddling for rowing — 
unless the saga-man, centuries after the occui'rence, changed the 
words — perhaps we ought not to be very certain about such a detail. 
They had seen at least fragments of skin-covered boats in Greenland, 
as we know from Ari and Thorkel Gellison,^ and may have been 
predisposed to assume identity of covering in two articles not unlike 
at a distance, or even very near, as Dr. Storm has suggested. A 
dark-tinted birch-bark-covered canoe, such as I have seen on the 
shore of Lake Superior, might well be taken for one covered with 
equally dark and smooth porpoise hide or cured sealskin or the pre- 
pared and hairless skin of any marine animal, especially by a man who 
expected the latter and was uncritical in distinguishing. Moreover the 
saga-man would remember the hide-covered boats of Ireland and other 
European countries, but would never think of tree-bark as a probable 
covering material. He might even suppose that he was making 
a strictly necessary correction by such a change. Indeed both cover- 
ings are really skins, animal or vegetable. The name " woodskin " 
is still commonly applied to the bullet-tree bark boats in use on the Es- 
sequibo River. Mr. Kirke's Twenty-five Years in British Guiana* 
presents a neat parallel (by reversal) to an error of observation such 
as Dr. Storm suggests in this case. It appears that a " woodskin," be- 
ing suddenly lifted from the water, was taken for an alligator or some 
other animal, hide and all, creating a brief panic, which even the 
Indian boatman shared. So, vegetable skin has been and may be 
mistaken for animal ; then why not animal for vegetable ? — and what 
is there in the bark of the " black birch," more than in that of the 
rubber tree, to secure immunity from mistake? It may be that many 
people, considering the matter, have the pretty delicate bark of the 
white paper birch in mind ; but that would not answer. Indeed, no 
bark is so good as some woven fabrics, and the Passamaquoddy at 
least have now generally accepted the latter as canoe-covering ; for 
the Indian is not so hopelessly unadaptable as he is painted. 



^ G. Storm : Studies on the Vineland \'oyages. 
^ Page 466. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK T53 

But if these were skin-boats in the animal sense, what then ? The 
Eskimo use such undoubtedly, excepting the most northerly group, 
Rasmussen's People of the Polar North. Practically it has been 
the only covering material available, as well as the one best fitting 
the conditions of Arctic life. They have two kinds, the larger open 
umiak and the smaller kayak,^ the latter being closed on top quite to 
the wearer's body, so that an expert kayaker can turn somersault in 
the water. One can hardly believe that any such multitude of the 
great umiaks could have been gathered as the saga calls for ; or that 
the Norsemen would fail to note instantly such an anomaly as a little 
boat hugging the occupant's body. It is not to be doubted, either, 
that the ancient conservative Eskimo had the kayak in Thorfinn's 
time. 

But some say that Indians never used skin-boats. It appears that 
they did when there was a reason. The Dakota ' women crossed 
prairie rivers in coracles, or " bull-boats " of bufifalo-hide ; the Omaha ' 
also made skin-covered boats and used them ; the same assertion is 
made of the Nascopie,* and Dr. Brinton ' presents a more strictly 
relevant instance in the statement that the Beothuk of Newfoundland 
had both '* bark-canoes and skin-canoes." They were not confined to 
inland navigation, either, till the last. Whitbourne (1622) says: 
" Which canoes are the boats that they used to go to sea in," and the 
Rev. George Patterson,* who quotes him, remarks : " Their seaman- 
ship was evinced by their visiting Funk Island 40 miles from the near- 
est point of land " — a trip which they seem to have made twice a 
year after eggs and young birds. Cartwright ' also lays stress on this 
seafaring skill. Unless Dr. Brinton be in error, we have only to sup- 
pose a sufficient southward extension of the Beothuk at the opening 
of the eleventh century, and nothing remains of the skin-boat argu- 
ment in favor of the Eskimo. Nor were these Beothuk half-way 
between the races, as Lieutenant Holm, by analogy with the Aleut, 
seems to fancy ; for their appliances, works, ways, and language, so 
far as yet rescued by ethnologists, reveal a surprising individuality, 
distinctly of the Indian type, though a few things may have been 



' W. H. Dall : Alaska and its resources, p. 138. 

^ W J McGee : The Siouan Indians. Fifteenth Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnol., 
p. 172. 

^F. S. Dellenbaugh : The North Americans of Yesterdaj', p. 284. 

*R. C. Haliburton : A Search for Lost Colonies. Pop. Sci. Mo., vol. 27, p. 42. 

* Brinton : The American Race, pp. 40, 67. 

" Rev. Geo. Patterson : The Beothiks or Red Indians of Newfoundland; p. 126. 

'Journal republished 1911. 



154 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

borrowed from their northern neighbors. But we are not at all 
confined to this Beothuk hypothesis. 

The question is mainly one of convenience as to material. The 
Indian takes what is best adapted to his purpose within the limits 
of what he can get. In Venezuela and the St. Lawrence basin and 
near one tributary of the Amazon^ he used bark (of the bullet tree, 
the elm tree, the black birch and perhaps others) ; in Newfoundland 
he sometimes used " animal hides " ; at the' mouth of the Bay of Fundy 
he now most often uses water-proof fabric ; but for temperate America 
generally the old-time typical canoe was the " dug-out," hollowed and 
shaped from a tree-trunk and heavy but durable. Something lighter 
was needed for the northern portages in the region torn by the 
glaciers, and there only the canoe-birch offered itself, with the elm 
as a poor substitute when the former was not plentiful ; also, going 
northward, the size of tree trunks lessened until at last a canoe could 
not be hollowed and carved but must be put together as a frame and 
covering. 

The word " canoe " on the Chesapeake still means primarily a 
vessel made from one or more tree-trunks. They are often large, often 
swift and graceful under sail, besides being the most unsinkable craft 
afloat ; and " canoe-regattas " in this sense have been held annually 
off Talbot County for many years. 

This was almost as exclusively the case in southern New England, 
where canoe-birch trees of good size were rare, if existent, and there 
was little or no need for portages. Verrazano was visited at Narra- 
gansett Bay by Indians in dugouts only, and describes them ; 
Champlain tells us just how they were manufactured farther north. 
Thus far, following the general trend of these arguments, I have 
compared one kind of frame-boat with another, but it is most likely 
that the boats which were paddled into Hop had no need of any frame 
or any covering, although their dark and water-polished sides might 
resemble smooth bark or smooth hide. Their material of course 
would be really more akin to the fireplace brands or dark wooden 
"coals," with which in the distance they are compared by the saga. 
But in truth our Norsemen would trouble themselves little about the 
details of such matters. The furs for sale and the unusual weapons 
were far more interesting. 

Naturally, emphasis has been laid on the latter ; which were near 
bringing destruction on the colony, and which surprise us yet. 

Slings have long been considered by many a non-Indian weapon ; 



' A. R. Wallace : Narrative of Travels on the Amazon, p. 358. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 1 55 

and they Avere used by Eskimo near Godthaab in 1586. Davis ^ 
narrates : " Thev with shngs threw stones very fiercely into the moon- 
hght and strake one of tlie men, then boatswain, that he overthrew." 
Thorbrand may have been overthrown more fatally by one at Hop, for 
a " flat stone " killed him. This, of course, might be a tomahawk; 
but, the " war-slings " are distinctly mentioned by the saga, leaving 
no room for doubt. Thus far the eleventh century Skrellings and 
sixteenth century Eskimo agree very well. 

But it appears that some of the northeastern Indians of the late 
fifteenth century were slingers too. The map attributed to Sebastian 
Cabot and now in the National Library at Paris is provided with notes 
in Spanish and Latin, which Harrisse ' attributes to Grajales, an early 
Spanish editor. Note 8 is in both languages, and includes a list of 
weapons used by the inhabitants of the Isle of St. John. Harrisse's 
English translation is : " This land was discovered by John Cabot a 
Venetian and Sebastian his son the year of the redemption of the 
world 1494 on the 24th of July at the fifth hour of daybreak, which 
land they called the first land seen and a large island opposite the same 
St. John, because it was discovered on the solemn festival of St. 
John. The inhabitants ' of that country are dressed in the skins of 
animals. They use in war bows, arrows, darts, lances, wooden clubs 
and slings." Note 17 declares that the map was delineated in 1544. 

Hakluyt appears to have known of an extract from a map which 
was " hung up in the privy gallery at Whitehall." His copy in Latin 
repeats the words sagittis, hastis spiculis, clavis ligneris et fundis. 

A German work in Latin, brought to light by Dr. Major, copies 
nineteen inscriptions from a map which the author had seen in 
Oxford in 1556, containing the same entry. Its seventeenth note 
avers that " Sebastian Cabot. Captain and Pilot, of his Sacred, etc.. 
Majesty put upon me the finishing hand in a plane figure in the year 
1549." The map at Paris " w-as obtained from a Bavarian clergyman, 
and its earlier history seems unknown. But it seems reasonably well 
established that a map was made about the middle of the sixteenth 
century by or under the direction of Sebastian Cabot which attributed 
slings to the Indians of St. lohn Island on the American coast in 



^ Hakluyt's Principal Voyages, vol. 7, p. 400. Also Markham's Voyages, and 
Works of John Davis. 

^ Trans. Royal Soc. Canada 1898. p. 105. 

^Quoted also in Packard.: The Coast of Labrador, and in several other 
works before cited. 

*G. E. Weare : Cabot's Discovery of North America, vol. i, p. 261. 



156 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

1497. His testimony has incurred some doubt where matters pertain- 
ing to his own achievements are concerned, but in this instance there 
would be but Httle temptation to misrepresent. 

Many have supposed the Isle of St. John of the Cabots to be New- 
foundland itself ; but that they should have recognized, from merely 
skirting the seaboard, the insular character of this great mass of land 
is in the highest degree unlikely, in view of Cartier's ^ uncertainty 
even after he had passed into the Gulf through the Strait of Belle 
Isle, which Cortereal ^ missed altogether. Cape Breton, Prince 
Edward Island, and Sable Island have each borne this name on maps 
or in speech at various times, but there are reasons against them all. 
Most likely Avalon Peninsula,^ shown as an island by some of the 
older maps, was Cabot's Isle of St. John. Its slingers would have 
been Beothuk, then, or perhaps invading Micmac — whom Fiske may 
have had in mind when stating in The Discovery of America that 
slings would be as proper to Micmac as to Eskimo. 

At the present time slings * are not found in use at any nearer 
point than the Pueblos of the upper Rio Grande ; but they hold 
their ground very well in many parts of South America, always, 
with Mexico and intervening regions — the main home and head- 
quarters of their race." Sling-using begins at the bottom of the map, 
with the almost Antarctic and altogether wretched Yahgans of 
Tierra del Fuego ; and Bandelier has lately found it as active as ever 
in the village fights beside Lake Titicaca, the cradle of the most 
humane culture and the widest and best ordered governmental organi- 
zation in the New World before the white man came. He writes : " 
" A number are badly wounded now and then and some of them are 
killed, for the Indian is a dangerous expert with the sling." Again 
we read of " his sling, for which the women provide round pebbles in 
their skirts." 

At the opening of the sixteenth century, the sling-territory extended 
very much farther northward. Maya cities employed this weapon. 
Aztec armies had their slingers no less than those of the Incas. Dr. 
Friederici,' gleaning from early Spanish, French, and English narra- 



^ J. Winsor: From Cartier to Frontenac. Narr. Crit. Hist. Amer. 
*W. S. Wallace's Historical Introduction to Labrador," by W. T. Grenfell 
and others. 
^ M. F. Howley: The Ecclesiastical History of Newfoundland, p. 53. 

* Where they are chiefly in use by children, as Mr. Spindeu of the 
Am. Museum relates. 

* Brinton : The American Race, p. 331. 

"A. F. Bandelier: The Islands of Titicaca and Koati. pp. 88, 115. 
'A. Petermann's Geographische Mitteilungen, 191 1, Heft 2 (pi. 13). 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 1 57 

tives, offers us a map based on the use of slings and blowguns in which 
the former are given an immense area of the Rocky Mountain country 
and the Pacific coast ; also extended in a very narrow fringe along 
the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic as far as Hudson 
River. Even allowing for some misreports and misunderstandings, 
we cannot fail to see a progressive yielding of territory through the 
centuries. Apparently the sling ^ is an archaic American weapon, 
once of general prevalence, which has gradually given way to the bow 
and vanished before the rifle, holding out best in isolated nooks, or 
for special uses, or where favored by natural conditions. That it 
was not found by Miles Standish at Plymouth and Narragansett by 
no means makes its presence there improbable six hundred years 
earlier. 

The great noisy body which was cast on the ground behind the 
Norsemen is something quite unique in historic Indian warfare. 
Higginson " suggested that it might be a harpoon with a bladder 
float. Schoolcraft ' more plausibly identified it with a traditional 
but long obsolete form of giant club wielded by several men and said to 
have been in use during the severe wars of the Ojibwa, fiercest and 
most powerful of Algonquian tribes, as they moved westward to the 
upper lakes. It was prepared by shrinking a deer's hide around a 
large and heavy stone and on the end of a pole, to which it was bound. 
Of course the crashing effect would be great. But it does not fully 
correspond to the Skrellings' monstrous and unheard of creation. 

The Skrellings raised up on poles a great ball-shaped body, almost the size 
of a sheep's belly and nearly black in color, and this they hurled from the 
poles upon the land above Karlsefni's followers and it made a frightful noise 
where it fell. Whereat a great fear fell upon Karlsefni and all his men, for it 
seemed to them that the troop of the Skrellings was rushing toward them from 
every side. 

The nearest analogue would be a hand-grenade ; but Thorfinn could 
not know of such a thing. Before the arrival of the next white men, 
it was utterly forgotten. Whether truly reported in the saga or not, 
it stands an unsolved mystery, having a very ancient look. 

Dr. Fiske accepted Schoolcraft's Ojibwa explanation as conclu- 
sive. Nevertheless, Mr. James Mooney, who has spent much time 
among divers Indian tribes, tells me that he cannot make it agree 



^ For instances of former use in what is now Spanish-America consult 
Herbert Spencer's Descriptive Sociology, part 2, the works of Brinton, Mark- 
ham, H. H. Bancroft, and others already cited. 

^T. W. Higginson and W. MacDonald : History of the United States. Edition 

1905. P- 39- 
^ H. R. Schoolcraft: American Indians, vol. i. p. 72)- 



158 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

with what he knows of Indian fighting. Besides, though a four-man 
club, for all its clumsiness, might cause alarm and do damage, it could 
hardly strike on the ground beyond the enemy, making such an uproar 
as to suggest an attack from the rear by another " troop " descending 
on them " from the land " to cut off their retreat. 

Here was the situation : Karlsefni's men drawn up before the first 
houses near the bay shore, with the river on their right, the ground 
sloping up behind them to the woods, and assailed in front by a multi- 
tude of enemies who sprang from their canoes as these touched the 
land. Almost certainly some of them would turn the position by 
ascending the river, awakening disquiet. Amid a shower of sling- 
stones, arrows, and tomahawks, which the Icelanders were too few to 
adequately answer, there is a rush of a group of Indians carrying 
great poles, with something huge, black, and uncanny poised above 
them, and this is cast, amid such a pandemonium of sound as wild 
Indians best can raise, over the heads of the defenders, beyond them 
on the ground, where there is a tremendous additional uproar, rein- 
forced by the echoes from the wood border. At once the Norsemen 
feel, hear (and so see) enemies, on every side; panic takes them and 
they rush for a more defensible position, the women streaming out of 
the string of cabins to join the race, and Thorbrand, son of Snorri, 
Karlsefni's friend, being stricken down just ahead of Freydis 
within the wood-border by one of the missiles that come showering 
after them. She snatches his sword and turns, wild with fear and 
defiant anger, just as the Norsemen, rallying, turn also on the wooded 
Fall River Blufifs behind her, and come back ashamed of their fear. 
Then the Indians, not always good at pressing home a victory won, 
(or they might have annihilated Braddock's force notwithstanding 
the rear-guard stand of the colonial rangers), yield in their turn and 
paddle away. 

This is all consistent and most probable, granting the original 
panic, but something more than " a giant club " is required to explain 
it. Thus far a satisfactory explanation is not forthcoming. Possibly 
the solid " demon's head " suggested a hollow one, capable of being 
detachable from its support and cast by several jmdIcs together a good 
way up the hillside. If not some such clever invention of the moment, 
it must be a Norse reminiscence incorporated by the saga-man, as 
Dr. Nansen ^ has acutely suggested. 



Fr. Nansen : In Northern Mists, vol. 2 , p. 8. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 1 59 

17.— REVIEW OF DR. NANSEN'S CONCLUSIONS 
The more significant of Dr. Nansen's ^ observations in regard to 
the Norsemen in America have been briefly considered in relevant 
parts of the foregoing chapters. He has certainly added some 
valuable items of fact and gathered a most welcome array of ancient 
and medieval description, folk-lore, and mythology concerning de- 
lightful islands, real or fancied, such as the fourteenth, fifteenth, six- 
teenth and seventeenth century maps show to us plentifully and the 
beliefs concerning which have long been known in a general way to 
readers interested in such topics. Perhaps he has not sufficiently set 
forth the great contrast between the florid and preposterous extrav- 
agances of the Celtic sea stories and the sanity of the exploring part 
of Thorfinn Karlsefni's story, and of all that concerns him, indeed, 
Leif's story also, wherein can be found only a bare hint of the occult, 
such as people even of our own time never quite wholly and conclu- 
sively disbelieve. He may have made it even more nearly certain 
if possible than before that the Celtic and Scandinavian sea tales, 
meeting in Ireland and Iceland, had a moderate reciprocal influence ; 
but if the Icelanders were indebted mainly to Ireland for the name 
and story of Wineland, it seems entirely probable that their borrowing 
would have included in great measure the distinctive extravagances 
of Bran, Maelduin, St. Brandan, and their kind. It almost passes the 
bounds of possibility that the saga-man who wove the spectral marvels 
and picturesque magic of his own people into the Greenland part of his 
narrative should have ignored all the prodigies and impressive insular 
unrealities of the Irish writings and traditions if really familiar with 
them and drawing from that source in the exploring part of his story 
— and have confined himself almost entirely to matter-of-fact items, 
which fit with such astonishing accuracy the probable American shore- 
line of his time and the absolute certainties of American vegetable and 
animal life. The voyage record seems to be an accurate report, 
detailed though brief, as sensible and as credible in all essentials as 
any modern official document. 

Dr. Nansen asserts that the Norsemen " steered straight across the 
Atlantic itself and discovered North America " ; ' that the " open 
craft of the Norwegian Vikings, with their square sails, fared north 
and west over the whole ocean, from Novaya Zemlya and Spitsbergen 
to Greenland, Baffin's Bay, Newfoundland and North America " ; ^ 



'Fridtjof Nansen: In Northern Mists. Arctic Exploration in Early Times; 
translated by Arthur G. Chater; New York, 1911, vol. 2, pp. 58-62. 
'Ubid.. p. 234. 
' Ihid., p. 248. 
t 



l60 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

also that they visited Cape Breton (Keelness), the Wonderstrands 
below it, and some point yet farther down the coast where they met 
Indians and not Eskimo. He accepts their Helluland as probably 
Labrador, Markland as Newfoundland, and, as above, the discovery of 
the region called Wineland in the saga, though questioning the name 
or its implication. 

He lays even an excessive stress, it seems to me, on the entry in 
Icelandic annals, one at least being nearly contemporary, of the Green- 
land ship driven by stress of weather to Iceland in 1347, her crew 
reporting an intervening visit to Markland. But, after all, how can 
he be sure that these seamen told the truth ? Why are they more trust- 
worthy than Gudleif, whose visit to Biorn in some land of the west 
has been mentioned already, except that he gives us tests of accuracy 
which fail, and their meager story supplies no tests? Moreover, are 
we quite sure of the accuracy of the first annalist and possible inter- 
vening narrators? The statement is a bare sentence or two in length, 
credible enough in view of what we know from the saga and valuable 
as cumulative corroboration. But it will not do for the historic cor- 
nerstone of any evidence ; nor does it make Markland a whit more 
historic that Helluland or Wineland, The main features of the ex- 
ploring part of the saga tale are connected in a chain and of the same 
degree of reliability. They must stand or fall together. 

If the name Wineland be objectionable, we might give up the 
poetry of it without disaster. As above indicated. Dr. Nansen seems 
to agree exactly and fully with our version of the itinerary of these 
early explorers, at least as far as the Atlantic coast below Cape Breton 
island and their temporary settlement in a more southerly Indian- 
populated region, called Hop, in the saga. Beyond that he sum- 
marizes his conclusions under the following twenty-two points which 
it seems proper here to consider in succession, with some comments 
from my own observations. Dr. Nansen says : ' 

If we now look back upon all the problems it has been sought to solve in 
this chapter, the impression may be a somewhat heterogeneous and negative 
one ; the majority will doubtless be struck at the outset by the multiplicity of the 
paths, and by the intercrossing due to this multiplicity. But if we force our 
way through the network of by-paths and follow up the essential leading lines, 
it appears to me that there is established a firm and powerful series of conclu- 
sions, which it will not be easy to shake. The most important steps in this 
series are : 

(i) The oldest authority,* Adam of Bremen's work, in which Wineland is 
mentioned, is untrustworthy, and with the exception of the name and of the 



' In Northern Mists, vol. 2, pp. 58 ef seq. 

^The Ringerike runic stone is not given here, as its mention of Wineland 
is uncertain. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 161 

fable of wine being produced there, contains nothing beyond what is found in 
Isidore. 

Adam of Bremen wrote true things as well as marvels, just as 
many writers from his time and long- afterward have done. He may 
be trusted within reason, as well as those. He is careful to insist that 
this statement in regard to the wheat and wine is no marvel, but literal 
truth. What he wrote would be true of the American coast and would 
be especially true of its distinctive conspicuous food supplies in the 
latitudes we have pointed out, before the coming of maize. The wine- 
making fine large grapes have Strachey's corroboration, also Lescar- 
bot's. They are here still. They make strongly for verisimilitude 
and to the saga's credit. 

(2) The oldest Icelandic authorities that mention the name of " Vinland," 
or in the " Landnama," " Vindland hit G66a " say nothing about its discovery 
or about the wine there; on the other hand, Ari Frode mentions the " Skrael- 
ings " (who must originally have been regarded as a fairy people). The name 
of Leif Ericson is mentioned, unconnected with Wineland or its discovery. 

Full statements could not be expected in each relic of an ancient 
fragmentary literature. Ari's lost Islendingabok probably set forth 
the full account. Entries a little later present the above items to- 
gether. Mere evidence by omission is rarely cogent. It cannot reas- 
onably override the positive evidence referred to and the general 
prevailing tradition. If it could, it would merely change the name 
of the discoverer, for it is admitted that some one sailed from Norway 
and found America by the direct passage. If not Leif, who shall be 
named? And is there more evidence that an anonymous Norseman 
did it rather than that Leif did it? 

(3) It is not till well on in the thirteenth century that Leif's surname of 
Heppni, his discovery of Wineland ("Vinland" or "Vindland"), and his 
Christianizing of Greenland are mentioned (in the " Kristni-saga " and " Heim- 
skringla "), but still there is nothing about wine. 

This fact may be unfortunate, but what does it disprove? His 
father Eric was never called " Lucky " so far as we know, yet he 
created Norse Greenland. It does not seem important that a man's 
epithet should always be found with his name in the few surviving 
pre-thirteenth-century manuscripts. 

(4) It is not till the close of the thirteenth century that any information 
occurs as to what and where Wineland was, with statements as to the wine and 
wheat there, and a description of voyages thither (in the Saga of Eric the Red). 
But still the accounts omit to inform us who gave the name and why. 

In other words, the location of Wineland was not mentioned so 
far as we know, till Hauk Erlendsson made the earliest copy of the 



l62 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

saga and of Landnamabok that liappens to survive. In merely Ice- 
landic records and stories we have no right to expect such informa- 
tion unless from Islendingabok, which is lost. The situation is a 
natural one. If Hauksbook had happened to be destroyed the date 
must have been carried along further still, and that would yet prove 
nothing, except that our evidence would be less in volume and force. 

(5) The second and later principal narrative of voyages to Wineland (the 
Flateyjarbook's " Groenlendinga-pattr ") gives a ver}^ different account of the 
discovery, by another, and likewise of the later voyages thither. 

That is true. The natural course of development is for a later 
version to elaborate hints and weave stories about names, filling in any 
floating legendary data which may come to hand. This is especially 
true in a decadent artificial period, even at its beginning. The Flatey- 
book narrative is not unique in its method and qualities, but is a very 
bad example. 

(6) The first of the two sagas, and the one which is regarded as more to be 
relied on, contains scarcely a single feature that is not wholly or in part 
mythical or borrowed from elsewhere ; both sagas have an air of romance. 

This is far from the case, for Helluland, Markland, Kiallarness, are 
all admitted by Nansen to exist. Straumey, Straumfiord, the moun- 
tains, Hop, the seal headland are veritable. The courses around the 
great ness into and out of the Gulf are accurately and carefully given. 
Biarney is true to fact. The Wonderstrands are the typical American 
coast line found on no other Atlantic shore of which any Icelander 
short of the fifteenth century would be likely even to hear. The 
Indians, products, climate, and breeding places are authentic. The 
Uniped was probably an Eskimo in his kayak. The Greenland part 
of the tale has many embroideries of fancy. There are divers ballads 
turned to prose attached to the exploring narrative ; but they do not 
invalidate or obscure it. The saga-man might have chosen ad 
libitum magical cats and dog-footed monsters, the roc-phoenix and 
the island of unending laughter, holy white-furred hermits and angels 
who waited on the table, Judas and his hounding devils, the sea- 
monster that took the saint a-traveling on its back, the isle of women, 
the pool of youth, and the river of death. His Celtic sources (as 
supposed) would have done this. Why did he stick to the facts in- 
stead? Surely because he was not following Celtic models, but 
relating facts. 

(7) Even among the Greeks of antiquity we find myths of fortunate isles far 
in the western ocean, with the two characteristic features of Wineland, the 
wine and the wheat. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 163 

It is true that men learned very early of lovely Mediterranean 
islands and drew on their memory of reality to picture others, some- 
times real, sometimes unreal. Myths attached themselves to both. 
Afterward the Canaries supplied material in the same way. Some- 
times they were called isles of the blest or earthly paradises, with 
good reason and decorated by the exaggeration of poetry and legend 
with supernal additional delights; sometimes their lovely character- 
istics were transferred by sailors' fancy to islands farther out at sea. 
Some of the latter were real ; we know them as the Azores and 
Madeira ; the fourteenth century map-makers knew them un- 
doubtingly as The Fortunate Isles of St. Brandan. Their obvious 
attributes corroborated the ideal. We are not justified in saying con- 
clusively that this was or was not the end of the process. But if 
anyone crossed the Atlantic in warm latitudes, as Cabral did by acci- 
dent and Columbus by intention, they would find like beauties 
repeated. Before " mythical islands " can justly be used to disprove 
anything we must be sure they were mythical. Even then it would 
not be necessary to assume that men, in reporting things that really 
are, had borrowed from fanciful stories. 

(8) The most significant features in the description of these Fortunate Isles, 
or Isles of the Blest, in late classical times and in Isidore are the self-grown or 
wild-growing vine (on the heights) and the wild-growing (uncultivated, self- 
sown or unsown) corn or wheat or even cornfields (Isidore). In addition there 
were lofty trees (Pliny) and mild winters. Thus a complete correspondence 
with the saga's description of Wineland. 

Great trees are common in many parts of the world, so are mild 
winters in southerly regions on the same longitudinal line. But 
Isidore says nothing to strongly suggest wild growing grain seen in 
low places by men entering an estuary with grape-vines on the hills 
above it. Neither does Pliny nor any other authority cited. The 
combination is distinctly American on the Atlantic slope not far 
from the sea and within the limits of the large fox grape though no 
doubt it might occur elsewhere. Thorfinn gives this for Hop. 

Nansen, however, has certainly shown (if messis be taken to neces- 
sarily mean grain) a fair anticipation of Adam's celebrated state- 
ment, but the coincidence may well grow out of parallel facts. There 
is no real evidence of derivation by him from Isidore of Seville or 
from Pliny ; but there may well have been grape-festooned islands of 
the eastern Atlantic on which some form of wild grain or grain run 
wild might be found. It is not pretended that fox-grapes and our 
wild rice are the only wild grapes fit for wine and the only self-sown 
grain in the world. 



164 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

(9) The various attempts that have been made to bring the natural conditions 
of the North American coast into agreement with the saga's description of 
Wineland are more or less artificial, and no natural explanation has been offered 
of how the two ideas of wine and wheat, both foreign to the Northerners, could 
have become the distinguishing marks of the country. 

The coast line has changed in nine hundred years by the Hfting 
of the northern part, which probably included Straumey and all 
above it and by the depression of the lower part, which probably 
included Hop and all below, I believe I am the first one to call atten- 
tion to this change in the coast line in connection with the present 
subject.^ There has also been error in confusing the little squirrel 
grapes with the large fox grapes, which were probably not plentiful 
along the shore above southern Maine and only locally there. We 
find also a like error as to wild rice, which ought not to be expected 
in any quantity on or near bold shores like those along the Atlantic 
above the Kennebec. 

It may be that Norsemen could not raise wheat or make wine 
at home, but they were acquainted with both from their service in 
more southern countries and their hostile expeditions, even as early 
as the fifth century (see Nansen's In Northern Mists), into the mid- 
dle of the Mediterranean. Some of their men would be sure to have 
a general knowledge of wine-making. The very fact that these things 
were not to be had at home, but grew wild in the new world would 
make them prized and held as characteristic of the new found lands. 
That the " wheat " was not real wheat, but only a wholesome and 
abundant substitute, would make no difference ; though the wine 
would take first place. The country where such things were to be 
had for the gathering could be nothing but " Wineland the Good," 
with no need for aid from fairy attributes, though the peculiar form 
of the name perhaps might be influenced by the Fortunate Islands, 
namely the Canaries or Madeira (d'Legname — that is, Markland), 
Porto Santo and perhaps Pico and companions, with their undeniable 
beauty and the half classical half northern-pagan myths, which per- 
sistently clung to them. 

(10) In Ireland long before the eleventh century there were many myths and 
legends of happy lands far out in the ocean to the west; and in the description 
of these wine and the vine form conspicuous features. 

As a matter of fact the vine is not very conspicuous in Irish voyage 
legend. Still Irishmen often reached countries which had the vine 



^ See Chapter 16 herein, also article in the Smithsonian Report for 1897 on 
the Rising of Land Around Hudson Bay, by Robert Bell, of the Geological 
Survev of Canada. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 165 

and there must have been divers European and perhaps Atlantic spots 
where good grapes yet grew wild. If they reached America, as they 
probably did, they would find such in abundance. But Irish fancy 
working on cultivated grapes might add the element of wildness, 
even without any information as to the latter in either hemisphere. 

(11) From the eleventh century onward, in Ireland and in the North, we meet 
with a Grape-island or a Wineland, which it seems most reasonable to suppose 
the same. 

We also meet apple islands, for example, the Hesperides? From 
memory, I think the latter fruit more common in Irish and other 
northern legend. Nevertheless the saga and the old Icelandic writ- 
ings omit to place apples in America ; and in fact none were there. 
Why were not the apples borrowed from Ireland, if the grapes were? 

(12) From the Landnamabook it may be naturally concluded that in the 
eleventh century the Icelanders had heard of Wineland, together with Hvitra- 
manna-land, in Ireland. 

Each country may have heard it from the other, both items being 
common property by that time. Perhaps the name Great Ireland or 
Whitemen's Land may have a presumption in favor of Irish origin. 
There can be none for the Irish origin of Wineland. It is likely that 
Ireland first heard it from Iceland soon after Thorfinn's return to 
the former. 

(13) Thorkel Gellisson, from whom this information is derived, probably 
also furnished Ari Frode with his statement in the Islendingabook about Wine- 
land ; this is therefore probably the same Irish land. 

He is given as one transmitter of the Ari Marsson story, deriving 
it from the Earl of the Orkneys. He supplied the Greenland infor- 
mation of Ari Frode, having visited that country ; perhaps also some 
about Wineland. But how can this disprove the existence of the 
latter? 

(14) The Irish happy lands peopled by the sid correspond to the Norwegian 
huldrelands out in the sea to the west, and the Icelandic elf-lands. 

There is a general correspondence in fairy lore and the like every- 
where. But we know that there were real far western islands, as 
well as dubious and fanciful ones, and that everything between Eu- 
rope and Asia was held to be an island until after Vespucius. 

(15) Since the huldre- and sid-people and the elves are originally the dead, 
and since the Isles of the Blest, or the Fortunate Isles, of antiquity were the 
habitations of the happy dead, these islands also correspond to the Irish sid- 
people's happy lands, and to the Norwegian huldrelands and the Icelandic elf- 
lands. 



l66 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

These mythical folk probably are not always nor usually the 
" happy dead." Many different elements combine in the fairies and 
people of the underworld, for example, traditional memories of real 
aborigines who hid underground ; fancies born of the play of light 
and shade ; and ideals of gods fallen from their high estate. 

The Fortunate Isles of St. Brandan continued to be called so for 
at least half a century after they were accurately mapped and well 
known. Must we suppose that the Genoese and Norman skippers 
persisted in regarding them as the abodes of the happy dead ? 

(16) The additional name of "hit GoSa " for the happy Wineland and the 
name " Landit G65a" for huldrelands in Norway correspond directly to the 
name of " Insulse Fortunatse," which in itself £ould not very well take any other 
Norse form. And as, in addition, the huldrelands were imagined as specially 
good and fertile, and the underground, huldre- and sid-people, or elves, are 
called the " good people," and are everywhere in different countries associated 
with the idea of " good," this gives a natural explanation of both the Norse 
names. 

Brazil Island, sometimes called the Fortunate Island of the Irish, 
and St. Brandan's Fortunate Islands, one of which still bears its 
fourteenth century name of Porto Santo, would influence the ideal no 
doubt, but we cannot wipe Porto Santo off the map and Brazil prob- 
ably was as real. 

(17) The name " Vinland hit GoSa" has a foreign effect in Norse nomen- 
clature ; it must be a hybrid of Norse and foreign nomenclature, through " Vin- 
land " being combined with " Landit GoSa," which probably originated in a 
translation of " Insulae Fortunatse." 

The combination and translation may have happened. It is no 
more surprising that Insute Fortunatae should be transferred in this 
way than that Markland should be shifted from one of them to 
Newfoundland. Either name of the saga may commemorate such a 
transfer; and either may be a very natural coincidence. A name of 
mythical association may well be applied, and often has been applied, 
to a real region. Moreover, the saga is not accountable for this 
phrase, nor does Adam of Bremen use it. What men reported in 
the eleventh century should not bear the burden, however light, of 
adjectives or fancies of the twelfth or thirteenth. 

(18) The probability of the name of Skrselings for the inhabitants of 
Wineland having originally meant brownies, or trolls, that is, small huldrefolk, 
elves, or pygmies, entirely agrees with the view that Wineland was originally 
the fairy country, the Fortunate Isles in the west of the ocean. 

If so, the word was doubtless applied to the natives in the same 
spirit that Icelandic men in fight sometimes abusively addressed their 
opponents as " trolls " for example, see The Saga on the Heath-Slay- 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 167 

ings. But was it used prior to the voyages of Thorfinii and Leif ? If 
used in Greenland, it might easily be transferred to other savages. It 
does not seem to prove anything, although, if shown to have a magical 
implication, it would establish the existence of the same point of view 
for Eskimo and Indians as for Lapps — in itself not unlikely. Dr. 
Nansen supplies an excellent precedent in the use of Finn for three 
races and with implication of magic. But what is the proof that 
Skrselings originally meant fairy folk and to what period does 
" originally " refer? Our first introduction to them is through Thor- 
finn, who trafficked with them as human beings and fought and killed 
them. 

(19) The statement of the Icelandic geography, that, in the opinon of some, 
Wineland the Good was connected with Africa, and the fact that the Norwegian 
work, " Historia Norvegiae," calls Wineland (with Markland and Helluland) 
the African Islands, are direct evidence that the Norse Wineland was the 
Insulee Fortunatse, which together with the Gorgades and the Hesperides were 
precisely the African Islands. 

Not of identity, but of supposed neighborhood in extension ; also 
of a warm climate and luxuriance. This I have said elsewhere. It 
does not touch the saga, but only the theories of Abbot Nicholas or 
some one else, and perhaps the general tradition. It was natural that 
they should think so, if Leif reached the Chesapeake. Since Edrisi 
in the twelfth century clearly distinguished between the Canaries and 
the other islands which lay farther at sea, since the classical geog- 
raphers before him well knew the former, and since the early medie- 
val maps kept and emphasized Edrisi's distinction, there seems no 
great probability of any real confusion of identity. 

(20) Even though the Saga of Eric the Red and the " Gronlendinga-j'attr " 
contain nothing which we can regard as certain information as to the discovery 
of America by the Greenlanders, we yet find there and elsewhere many features 
which show that they must have reached the coast of America, the most 
decisive among them being the chance mention of the voyagers from Markland, 
in 1347. To this may be added Hertzberg's demonstration of the adoption of the 
Icelandic game of " knattleikr " by the Indians. The name of the mythical 
land may then have been transferred to the country that was discovered. 

Fortunately the fact that the Icelanders reached the coast of 
America does not rest wholly on the veracity of the sailors on the 
small Greenland ship, or on any annal. America was reached by 
Thorfinn, and more or less explored as far as southern New England. 
Leif had previously reached the same region and probably passed a 
long way below it. Our reasons for believing so are fully stated 
elsewhere. 



l68 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

(21) Hvitramanna-land is a mythical land similar lo the Wine-island of the 
Irish, modified in accordance with Christian ideas, especially, perhaps, those of 
the white garments of the baptized — as in the " Navigatio Brandani " in refer- 
ence to the Isle of Anchorites or the " Strong Men's Isle" (= Starkramanna- 
land) — and of the white hermits. 

Dr. Nansen cannot know that it was a mythic land. I do not know 
that it was not. It may be the American coast below Wineland, for 
example New Jersey or the Carolinas. 

(22) Finally, among the most different people on earth, from the ancient 
Greeks to the Icelanders, Chinese, and Japanese, we meet with similar myths 
about countries out in the ocean and voyages to them, which, whether they be 
connected with one another or not, show the common tendency of humanity 
to adopt ideas and tales of this kind. 

We meet such stories everywhere and no doubt many of them are 
based on real adventures often wildly distorted. The Zeno tale is in 
point. It developed into something portentous and inexplicable ; 
and is still in dispute ; but most likely they made voyages and encount- 
ered adventures, which were a kernel of truth for their repeatedly 
distorted story. But one ought not to call it a myth, although it 
contains a short myth as an episode ; nor can any light be extracted 
from it in that way. The voyage stories of different countries have 
not yet rendered much aid in the Wineland investigation ; but it is 
greatly to be desired that the veil should be lifted from the origin of 
the names Antillia, Brazil, and others which men call mythical to 
cover uncertain knowledge. 

Some of the above conclusions by Dr. Nansen make in favor 
of the position taken in the present book ; others can hardly be said 
to weigh either way. Only a minority of the remainder have seemed 
to need moderately extended treatment, partly because Dr. Nansen 
is in so many respects in accord with what I had already written and 
as to others he could be best convinced by showing him the places, 
flora, fauna, and conditions. It was inevitable that he should make 
some errors in dealing with foreign and unfamiliar things and very 
plainly he had never thought of the progressive changes in coast 
outline during 900 years, nor the difference in nature and distribution 
between the large wild grapes out of which the early colonists made 
good wine and the small wild grapes which are tart and more like 
berries. When Dr. Storm so naturally went astray it is not surprising 
that Dr. Nansen should do likewise. There are doubtful inferences 
and conjectures even in von Humboldt.- ' Like many others Dr. 
Nansen has failed to distinguish adequately between the mountainous 
northern home of Thorfinn's party on the bay connected with Straum- 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 169 

fiord and their much warmer southern home Hop with its loch and 
river, marsh-grain and grape-covered hills ; though the saga makes 
the distinction clear, if read without misconception. 

His elaborate treatment of the insular myths and legends will 
find its most abiding value as a study toward elucidating the problem 
of the Mythical Islands of the Atlantic, closely allied to such questions 
as those of Great Ireland and Wineland and calling aloud at the 
present time for a more thorough investigation than has ever yet 
been attempted. 

But we must insist that the Icelanders could never have borrowed 
from the mass of Irish and antique myths and northern fairy stories 
such a log-book-like narrative as that of Thorfinn Karlsefni, hitting 
without fail such a great number of items accurately distinctive 
of the Atlantic coastline of North America with practically no 
introduction of European elements except possibly one or two arms 
and gestures from Norse experience. And if we find the narratives 
accurate in so very many items, why cannot we believe the voyagers 
in the reasonable statement that they gave the name of Wineland to a 
country which surprised them by its luxuriance of grapevine growth 
and its abundance of large fine grapes good for wine making? Since 
wild grain in plenty was also there, with plentiful fish and game, 
shore-birds and their eggs, great trees for house-building and ship- 
building, wood of finely veined and dotted grain for ornamental work, 
tall grass excellent for hay and grazing, and, in the more southern 
parts, a climate so mild as to remind them of the Canaries and Mauri- 
tania, why should not they call it " good," even if that word had come 
to especially imply something supernally fortunate and blessed, as in 
the case of Teneriffe, Porto Santo, and Madeira? 

Such an instance as the sea currents of Straumey and Straumfiord, 
found nowhere on our coast except in and near Grand Manan, of 
such notable volume and power and nowhere corroborated by so many 
coincidences of fact and statement, ought surely to show Dr. Nansen 
(who expresses no doubt of them) that this saga-narrative can not be 
mainly the product of old legendary lore and the same is at least 
equally true of the emphatically and almost exclusively American 
Wonderstrands. 

18.— GENERAL SURVEY 

We find, then, that there is no trustworthy record of any Norse 
settlement in America existing continuously for more than one year ; 
nor of any Norse voyages to America, excepting those of Leif and 
Thorfinn and the visit of a small vessel more than three hundred and 
forty years afterward. We may suspect what we will of that long 



I/O SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

interval and there is always the possibility that new facts may be 
discovered ; but such is the present status of the question. 

We find further that Leif reached the fox-grape-bearing coast 
of the continent, probably as low as southeastern Massachusetts at 
the least ; that he touched at several points and brought back certain 
products ; that the chances would favor the Gulf of Maine for his 
storm-driven landfall and a subsequent long run down the shore after 
the fashion of other navigators ; but we kno\V little of the voyage 
except the general impression of warmth and natural bounty which 
his report made at home. 

We find also that Thorfinn successfully carried his colonists to 
Labrador, Newfoundland, and Cape Breton, thence along the Atlantic 
coast of Nova Scotia to the great Bay of Fundy, near which they 
made their first home, probably on the Passamaquoddy shore and 
Grand Manan.'' Afterward they removed to a much more southern 
spot, and remained there for a year, then returned to the Fundy 
region, making an incidental exploration of Nova Scotia and the 
southeastern shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and at last regaining 
Greenland and Iceland after three years' American experience. Hop, 
their most southern point, was either on the eastern coast of New 
England below Maine or in the basin of Narragansett Bay, with a 
slight preponderance of probability for the latter. 

Besides these voyages, two attempts were made, Thorstein's in 
1002 and Bishop Eric Gnupson's in 1121. The former failed, the 
latter vanished ; and nothing ever came of their endeavors. 

The three " lands " explored by Karlsefni kept their names until 
more modern ones were substituted. Helluland soon came to mean all 
the desolate country above the forest, whether with flat stones or with- 
out them, and was a favorite field for later fictitious sagas. 

Markland probably stood always for Greenland's nearest supply 
of growing timber, that is for Newfoundland, perhaps with some 
vague extension to neighboring shores. The traditional view of 
the errand of the little ship of 1347 as a timber-gatherer may have 
originated in a knowledge of prevailing custom or in some unrecorded 
statement of its crew. If it had not been torn from its anchorage 
and driven to Iceland we should never have heard of it, any more 
than of the many others which we may conjecture to have made the 
trip successfully, escaping or outliving the storms. 



'Dr. Nans en believes in a visit or visits to these points and an encounter 
with Indians, not Eskimo, somewhere on tlie Atlantic coast below Cape Breton ; 
but he is uncertain as to the particular explorers and thinks the name Wine- 
land wholly mythical, though calling Markland "historic." 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK I7I 

Wineland seems to have been understood as beginning with Cape 
Breton, below the Strait of Cabot, and extending a long way south- 
ward. The most general conjecture was that it joined Africa some- 
where in the tropics ; until the Spanish discoveries made this untenable 
and later explorations revealed a long coast-line independent of the 
eastern world and broken by a few deep inlets, the greatest of which 
was the Chesapeake. Then they pitched upon some such " fiord " as 
marking Wineland off from America of the Spaniards. But at all 
times its warmer and more prolific regions made the dominant ideal 
of the new country among the northern people. 

Of course " discovery " in its fullest sense calls not only for finding 
but for adequate disclosure. But what is adequate in this connection ? 
Must we demonstrate a full understanding of the matter by the more 
prosperous nations around the Mediterranean, or some effective 
influence on exploration and colonization in later centuries? It is 
a matter of definition only, but these requirements would be perhaps 
a little immoderate. 

In Scandinavia the results were so effectually announced that 
they remained sensational topics of conversation in a royal court 
nearly seventy years afterward — a court and kingdom very indirectly 
concerned. The same information was published by Adam of Bremen 
about the same time in Germany, so amply that manuscript copies of 
his book were to be found at widely separated points of central 
Europe for half a millenium afterward. It is incredible that none of 
them reached Italy, and equally so that the story of the three years' 
Wineland adventure should not have been freely told there by Gudrid 
during her eleventh century pilgrimage to Rome, and repeated from 
time to time by the many Icelandic pilgrims and soldiers of fortune 
whom we read of in other sagas. Furthermore ^ the tithes for the 
support of Crusaders were paid by Greenland from time to time dur- 
ing the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries at least, though in a dila- 
tory way ; and men who were sometimes sent to collect them must have 
wonderfully lacked curiosity if they made no inquiry concerning 
Markland, if only to find out whether it might prove another resource. 
What they learned would surely find its way back, in general outline, 
if no more, to the central authority. On all grounds, we must believe 
that the Vatican was aware of these new western lands, but probably 
with little more interest than attached to the reports of upper Green- 
land. That such knowledge should have been possessed and allowed 



' B. F. De Costa: The Pre-Columbian Discovery of America, p. 322 et scq;. 
also most of the other works before cited concerning Greenland. 



172 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

to lapse away out of mind is no more remarkable than that Edrisi 
should have known of the lake sources of the White Nile in the 
twelfth century and drawn them conspicuously on his map ; although 
the unheeding world of Europe forgot them and they had to be labor- 
iously rediscovered seven hundred years afterward. We are learning 
that the world's memory has had many trances of oblivion. 

As to influence on succeeding voyages, Nansen has called attention 
to the many Scandinavians who had settled in Bristol before the dis- 
covery of North America. Storm very reasonably urged long ago 
the identity of Markland and the Irish Brazil, the quest for which 
passed from Limerick to this same Bristol ; Fischer ^ has treated 
the same subject rather more conspicuously ; and, as we have seen, 
the fourteenth and fifteenth century maps afford very curious cor- 
roborative indications along several converging lines. Moreover, 
John Cabot in his first voyage turned northward for a time (Payne ^ 
thinks to Iceland) from his first westward course, a proceeding that 
cost him some trouble, according to Sebastian, and which would 
hardly recommend itself to one who had never heard of discoveries 
made from that quarter. Also he promptly gave the land ' which he 
found substantially the name currently in use then, or not very long 
before, by Icelanders, for some western region of uncertain identity 
which, on the whole, is most likely to be this same Newfoundland. 
Finally, soon after his return that summer, as reported by an Italian 
envoy who was his friend and whose letter is still extant, he and his 
mercantile backers reported that they thought brazil-wood grew 
there, this being the characteristic product which was popularly 
believed to have given the great Isle of Brazil its name. Everything 
goes to prove that he had the former Irish and Icelandic voyages and 
legends in mind, and that these and like influences would soon have 
impelled him or some other to success along this line, even if there 
had been no Spanish discovery of the Antilles. 

Apart from this effect in Britain, Adam of Bremen's account of 
Wineland and its products was circulating in print from Holland 
before the seventeenth century, and Ortelius also was presenting 
Wineland by name as a Norse discovery identical with Estotiland. in 
theorizing about the origin of the American Indians ; while in 
Iceland itself there was a continuous succession of sagas and other 
works touching the subject, oral, written and printed, original and 



'The Explorations of the Northmen, etc., p. 105. Cf. E. J. Payne: History 
of America. 
'As above, p. 22,2,. 
■'E. J. Payne: History of America, p. 217. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 1/3 

copied, besides the entries in the annals, until more modern kinds of 
books took up the task of preservation and exposition, the first formal 
History of Wineland, that of Torfaeus, appearing in 1705. Since 
that time there has never been a total dearth of such literature, nor 
any real break in the chain. Surely in all this we have disclosure, not 
indeed at all times voluminous, but extending over a great area and 
through the march of centuries. Is not this, following the actual 
finding of our coast and its partial exploration, quite enough to 
justify the use of the word discovery? 

This does not diminish the merit of Columbus in rediscovery, 
primarily for the benefit of Latin peoples and with no aid from the 
northern sources, which he and they agreed in holding lightly. While 
in " Frisland " or Iceland or during his dubious voyage yet farther 
westward, he may well have heard of Wineland ; but if so he has given 
no sign ; and he surely would have used it against his adversaries had 
he recognized an available argument. There simply was nothing in 
the tradition which savored of Ind or Cathay ; and he was as far as 
could be from the ambition to discover a new continent. Its existence 
appeared so dreadful a negation of all his hopes that he would not 
admit it, even when suspicion must have been haunting him ; but 
compelled his follovk^ers by cruel and extravagant threats to join in 
an affidavit that they had reached Asia instead. 

It has also been lightly said ^ that the Norse journeyings up and 
down our coast compare with the voyages of Columbus as the sport 
of children with the achievements of men. But is this true? The 
chief motive of Leif was to carry the gospel of Christ to his Green- 
land home, at the same time rejoining those of his blood from whom he 
had been long parted ; this he effected perfectly and promptly, inci- 
dentally presenting the data which he had collected, as the result of 
an accidental discovery and hasty explorations on the way. The 
chief motive of Thorfinn was exactly that which we admire in our 
first, hardy, English-speaking settlers, the finding of new homes for 
their families and incidentally upbuilding a new country. He failed 
in this, because the odds were too heavily against him, not from any 
lack of competent planning or sturdy endeavor ; and he brought back 
from Wineland a notable accession to human knowledge, besides 
adding another heroic figure to the picture gallery of human efTort. 
The chief motive of Columbus was to find a shorter route to Asia, 
with consequent profit and glory to his sovereign and himself, and a 
wider opportunity for converting the heathen. He failed utterly in 



'J. Fiske: The Discovery of America. 



1/4 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

his immediate aim. Yet he brought the New World into the Hght 
and demonstrated that the Sea of Darkness was no formidable barrier. 

Which of the three should stand foremost is debatable, depending 
largely on the " spectacles of the judge." Perhaps we may fairly say 
that Thorfinn was the most practical and modern ; Leif, the most 
unselfish and exempt from failure in what he aimed to do ; and 
Columbus the most picturesque, the most conspicuous, and the most 
important for the future. 

It was the ill luck of Leif the Lucky and Thorfinn the Promising to 
discover and begin exploring America before the world was ready. 
The Genoese came with the rising tide of modern life and it ensured 
that his work should go on after him. But neither Columbus nor 
Leif made any radical change in the course of the world's history. 

If he had remained in Spain, and so found nothing in 1492, Cabral, 
rounding out too far from Africa in his East Indian voyage, would 
quite as certainly have struck the South American coast in 1500. By 
then, too, or not long afterward,^ success would surely have come as 
well to the plucky and persistent merchants of Bristol and their 
captains, who had twice essayed before 1480 to reach that Brazil 
which probably included Markland and had repeated ' such attempts 
annually or oftener for some seventeen years, until the successful 
one landed them with Cabot on the American mainland before either 
Vespucius or Columbus. Possibly mankind might have prospered 
even better if sixteenth century access to the new world had been by 
this upper gate alone. No doubt many records would be preserved 
which went up in flames before Spanish bigotry; and it is hardly 
imaginable that the native semi-civilization could have fared worse. 
At any rate, toward the end of the fifteenth century the speedy 
discovery of America was quite inevitable. 

The situation has never been paralleled. Europe, so long facing 
eastward, had turned about the other way and was all alive on its 
Atlantic front. Besides the swarm of Basque, Breton, and Norman 
fishermen, continually urging their industry farther afield, there were 
three lines of approach, making a gigantic race of most absorbing 
interest, across the great sea. At the north, English seekers after 
the half-forgotten memories of our race which had turned to myth ; 
in the middle, a man who sought a certainly known goal by an 
impossible route ; below him, the Portuguese navigators, who well 



'J. Winsor : Narr. and Crit. Hist, of America. 

* Letter of Soncino given in original Italian and translation by G. E. Weare. 
before cited. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK I75 

knew both route and goal, but swayed out into the unknown ocean on 
their loose-flung way, with altogether unsuspected opportunity for 
great discovery; and all the time the long- waiting double continent 
barred every path and was by no means to be missed. It was a mere 
question of miles and degrees and of first overcoming them. The man 
of the middle line won and is rightly praised for his persistence and 
successful endeavor, as well as for his wide views of the problems 
then confronting mankind. 

But in Leif 's time there was no European pressure westward except 
that of the sparsely populated adventurous Scandinavian North, and 
this did not wholly suffice. The wave touched Wineland but soon 
receded ; even falling back several centuries later from Greenland 
also, after a wonderfully tenacious occupancy, while the rest of the 
world hardly perceived the loss. But a discoverer is not in fault 
for the lack of wit of his generation. He should not be deprived of 
his honors by any overstraining of language. Leif Ericsson, or 
Thorfinn Karlsefni, if we follow Dr. Nansen in doubting Leif, 
remains the first authentically recorded discoverer of America. 
Gudrid, his wife, holds her place as the first white American mother, 
and their son, Snorri, is sufficiently well attested as the first-born white 
American. 



NOTES. 

1 (p. 20). Thus Peter Martyr believed — "the cosmographers well considered " 

that Columbus reached "The Islands of Antillia " (Peter Martyr 
d' Anghiera: The Decades of the New World (1511) ; Eden's trans- 
lation (1555), the First Decade, pp. 2, 3). Cf. A Portuguese anonymous 
map of 1502 shows the " Antilie " applied to Cuba and neighboring 
islands by explicit inscription. 

2 (p. 21). The peasantry and fisher folk of the Arran Islands still call it the 

Great Land (Westropp: Brazil and the Legendary Islands of the 
North Atlantic, 1912, p. 257). 

3 CP- 22). Perhaps montonis originally was montanis (mountains, Italian); 

as we know that Pareto's Roillo had been Reylla — besides other like 
instances of accidental change. I. de Montonis- — the Isle of Sheep; 
which is conspicuous in the sea-tales of St. Brandan and the Magrurin 
of Lisbon. 

4 (p. 24). Westropp, in his very recent work on Brasil and the Legendary 

Islands of the North Atlantic, published by the Royal Irish Academy, 
1912, p. 255, mentions a mythical King Breas and a missionary Bresal 
of about the year 480 and suggests that Brasil may have been named 
after the latter ; also Hardiman's The History of Galway, p. 2, quotes 
from one of the i6th century Four Masters, who compiled much older 
material, a mention of Breasail (apparently a pagan Gaelic hero or 
deity), having a very ancient look, but there seems a lack of data to fill 
the wide gap between the fifth and fourteenth centuries. The Italian 
and Catalan maps of the fourteenth and. fifteenth centuries generally 
present the name as I. de Brazil, sometimes Y de Brazil, with divers 
variations in orthography, such as Berzil, Brazi, Bracir and Buxelle, 
beside those given below. 

5 (p. 25). The word Bracile (obviously Brazil) occurs in a treaty or com- 

pact of peace and trade, dated 1193. between the " Bononienses and 
Farrarienses," copied into volume 2 of Antiquitates Italicae Medii 
Aevi by L. A. Muratori, beginning at page 891. In a list of specific 
commodities embodied in this compact, and including indigo, incense, 
wax, and certain hides or furs, we find also (p. 894) " drapis de 
batilicio, de lume zucarina, de grana de Brasile." On page 898 Mur- 
atori mentions that a deed of the year 1198 uses the same words "grana 
de Brasile." The use of the word " grain " on two occasions in dif- 
ferent kinds of documents at an interval of five years cannot be an 
accidental error. There is nothing to hint at any confusion with woods 
or dyes. The name suggests " ble Turquoise " for maize and other 
like names of a later time. We must suppose that Brazil was believed to 
be a country capable of supplying a distinctive grain and that the grain 
in question had acquired a settled name of commerce at this early date. 
The Memorias Historicas sobre la Marina Commercio y Artes de 
la Antiqua Ciudad de Barcelona, by Antonio de Capmany y de Mont- 
palu in Vol. 2, presents a series of copies of orders or regulations 

176 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 1/7 

establishing impost and seignorage tarifs for different ports and of 
course mentioning many commodities. On pages 4, 17 and 20 are found 
in separate documents " carrega de Brasill," " faix de bresil"; and 
" cargua de brazil," the earliest dating 1221, the second 1243 and the 
third a little later in that century. As they accompany sugar, paper, 
alum, perfumes, wax, and other miscellaneous goods, nothing can be 
inferred as to the meaning of the word except that brazil was some 
generally recognized and packaged article of Catalan trade. In one 
list grain is mentioned generally and separately, but this need not exclude 
brazil from being some special grain. Also the words " de qualibet 
centeria de brasile venali " occur in a 1312 grant of murage rates to 
Dublin — Patent Roll V. Edw II, Part 2 m 7, as quoted in a recent letter by 
Mr. Westropp, author of Brasil, etc. But, as he says, it has no necessary 
relation to dye-woods. It may obviously mean any commodity associated 
with " Brasil." 

6 (p. 26). Several old maps show the main island of the Bermudas exag- 

gerated, and of approximately crescent form, for example, that of F. 
de Witte, 1660, and another in the U. S. National Museum, unnamed 
and undated, but bearing 1668 as its latest discovery entry and belonging 
apparently to the early eighteenth century. 

7 (P- 38). In point of fact this same feat of blending all the Faroes in one 

with change of place had been performed long before, as appears from 
an eleventh century map in the British Museum reproduced by San- 
torem, presenting Ysferi (apparently meaning Island of Fari) as a 
large island west or northwest of Ireland. Of course Y was a common 
equivalent of I (Insula) and the name was currently changed slightly, 
for example, to Frisland by Christopher (or Ferdinand) Columbus as 
well as Nicolo Zeno. 

8 (p. 40.) Mr. V. Stefansson has recently reported certain Eskimo of white 

racial characteristics on Coronation Gulf near the middle of the 
top of the continent, with the suggestion that they may possibly be 
descendants of these Greenlanders. But there are several other ways 
of accounting for the phenomenon, though perhaps none is perfectly 
satisfactory, and until we have further light on the subject the safest 
plan is to treat it as irrelevant. 

9 (p. 109). A more recent interpretation (the Athenaeum, London, Septem- 

ber, 1912), derives two of the Skrelling words from Eskimo. The 
Athenaeum says : " M. Henri Cordier in the current number of the 
Journal des Savants calls attention to a proof of the discovery of 
America in the eleventh century which has hitherto passed unnoti'ced. 
In the Saga of Eric the Red it is said that when Thorfinn Karlsefni 
returned from ' Markland ' or Newfoundland, in 1005, he took back to 
Greenland with him two children from the northern land of the Skrael- 
ings, and four words of their language are preserved in the Saga. 
These words were thought by the Greenlanders to be the names of the 
children's parents or chiefs ; but M. Cordier shows that they can be 
traced to Esquimaux phrases of the present day, two of them meaning 
something Hke ' Wait a moment ' and ' the Northern Islands ' respec- 
tively." But Dr. Nansen's derivation of these words from the Norse 
has a more persuasive air. Since the Icelanders apparently lent their 



178 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

legends to their captives or read them into the utterances of the latter 
we may well suppose a like contribution of words or a transformation 
beyond any retracing. 
10 (p. 118). James Wallace in "A description of the Isles of Orkney," 1693 
(John Small, editor, 1886), p. 5, writes, "In this firth about two miles 
from Caithness lies Stroma a little isle " and a note probably by Mal- 
colm Laing adds, " i. e., Straum Island from the furious streams that 
pass by it." The name Straumey occurs also at divers points around 
the coast of Iceland according to the late Mr. Steii-tgrimur Stefansson, an 
Icelander. C/. Debes (L. J.) : Faroe and Faeroa Referata. (Description 
of the islands and inhabitants of Faroe.) Translated by J. S., " Osteroe 
and Stromoe are as it were bound together by a ground, over which runs a 
very rapid stream .... From this stream it is that Stromoe is so 
called." 



PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

For extended bibliographies see Hermannsson's " Bibliography of the 
Icelandic Sagas " in Islandica, Vol. 2, published by Cornell University Library, 
also " In Northern Mists " by Nansen, E. F. Slafter's The Discovery of 
America by the Norsemen, and Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of 
America, Vol. i. 

Allen, J. A. : History of the American bison. U. S. Geol. and Geogr. Survey 
of Colorado and neighboring states (1875). 

American bisons, living and extinct. Kentucky Geological Survey 

Memoirs, 1876. Part 2. 

American Aborigines : The problems of the unity or plurality of the probable 
place of origin of the. Amer. Anthr., Vol. 14, No. i, Jan.-March, 1912. 

Ari the Wise: Islendingabok. 

Arnold, C. and Frost, F. J. T. : The American Egypt; record of travel in 
Yucatan. New^ York, 1909. 

d'AvEZAc, M. P. : Les iles fantastiques de I'ocean occidental an moyen-age. 
Paris, 1845. 

Anderson, R. B. : America not discovered by Columbus. 

Anglo-Norman Trouveres of the 12th and 13th centuries (unsigned) in- 
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Babcock, W. H. : Review of Westropp's Brasil, etc. Current Anthropological 
Literature. September-December, 1912, pp. 296-300. 

Eskimo long distance voyages. Amer. Anthr., Jan.-Mar., 1913. 

Bacon, E. M. : Henry Hudson, New York, 1907. 

Narragansett Bay. New York, 1904. 

Bancroft, H. H. : The Native races of the Pacific Coast of North America, 

Vol. I. 
Bandelier, a. F. : The islands of Titicaca and Koati. Hispanic Society of 

America, 1910. 
Barring-Gould, S. : Curious myths of the middle ages. 
Batalha-Reis, J. : The supposed discovery of South America before 1448, 

Geographical Journal (London), Vol. 9, p. 185. Elaborate review of 

the Portuguese sources and the A. Bianco map of 1448, especially with 

regard to coast line, inscribed as 1500 miles away (or 1500 miles long). 

Supports Oldham's interpretation and position. 
Beamish, N. L. : Voyages of the Northmen to America. Introduction by 

B. F. Slafter. 
Beauvois, E. : La decouverte du Nouveau monde par les Islandais et les 

premieres traces du christianisme en Amerique avant I'an 1000. Nancy, 

1875. 

Les dernieres vestiges du Christianisme freche du lo^ an 142 

siecle dans Markland et la Grande Irlande. Paris, 1877. 

179 



/ 



l8o SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

Beavvois, E. : L'elisee transatlantique. 

Les Skrtelings ancetres des Esquimaux dans les temps pre-Colom- 

bien. 

Beazley, N. L. : John and Sebastian Cabot. 

— ■ The dawn of modern geography (especially Vol. 2, pp. 48-83 and 

547-S48; Vol. 3, p. 422 and pp. 494-529). 
Beccaria's map of 1435 showing Antillia and neighbors as newly reported 

islands. Plate 8 of Studi. Bibl. e. Biog., 2d and 3d Ital. Geogr. Cong. 
Bell, R. ; Rising of land around Hudson Bay. Smithsonian Report for 1897. 
BiDDLE, R. : A memoir of Sebastian Cabot. 
BiGGAR, H. P. : The precursors of Jacques Cartier. 

The voyages of the Cabots and of the Corte-Reals to North 

America and Greenland 1497-1503. Paris, 1903. 

Blacket, W. S. : Researches into the lost histories of America. 

Blome, R. : Isles and territories belonging to His Majesty in America. 
London, 1673. 

Boggild, F. : Runic inscription at the Great Falls of the Potomac. Historical 
Magazine, March, 1869. 

BoNTiER and Leverrier. The Canarian or book of the conquest. Translated 
by Major. Hakluyt Society, 1872. 

BoRY DE Saint Vincent : Essai sur les iles Fortunees. 

Brehart, Ernest: An Encyclopedist of the Middle Ages, Isidore of Seville. 

Brereton, J. : A briefe relation of the discoverie of the north part of Vir- 
ginia by Gosnold. The Bibliographer, 1902; Old South Leaflets, Vol. 
5 ; and Original Narratives of Early American History. 

Brinton, D, G. : The American race. A linguistic classification and ethno- 
graphical description. Philadelphia, 1901. 

On the position of Huitramannaland. Hist. Mag., Vol. 9, 1865. 

Brittain, a.: Discovery and exploration. (Vol. 3 of History of North 

America, edited by Guy Carlton Lee.) 
Brown, A. S. : Madeira, the Canary Islands, and the Azores. 
Brunn, B. : Excavations in Greenland. Medelelser om Gronland. Vol. 16. 
BuACHE, N. : Recherches sur Tile Antillia et sur I'epoque de la decouverte 

de I'Amerique. iMemoires de ITnstitut. de la Classe des Sciences. 

Mathematiques et Physiques. Vol. 6, pp. 85 et seq. 
Bugge, S. : The home of the Eddie poems, with special reference to the 

Helgilays .... Translated by W. H. Schofield. London, 1899. 
Bureau of American Ethnology. Annual reports and bulletins. 
BusHNELL, David, Jr. : An early account of Dighton Rock. Amer. Anthr., 

1908. 

Cabot, W. B. : In Northern Labrador. 

Cantwell, E. : Pre-Columbian discoveries of America. A. D. 545 to A. D. 

1492. Mag. West. Hist., Vol. 13, New York, 1890 
Cartier's Voyages : Original narratives of early American history. Also 

in Cartier to Frontenac, by Justin Winsor. 
Canada: Transactions and proceedings of Royal Society of (most volumes). 
Canto, E. : Arch, dos Acores, IX. 
C-'^RADOG OF Llancarvan : History of Cambria. Translated with notes by 

H. Lloyd about 1559, extended by D. Powell with notes. 1584. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 181 

Cartland, J. H. : Ten years at Pemaquid : Sketches of its history and its 

ruins. Pemaquid Beach, Me., 1899. 
Cartwright (G.) and his Labrador journal. Edited by C. W. Townsend, 

1911. 
Casey, Thomas L. : Subsidence of Atlantic shore line. Science, July 21, 

1911. 
Celtic Review (The). 
Chamberlain, A. F. : Origin of American aborigines. — Linguistics. Amer. 

Anthr. (1912), Vol. 14. 
1 Champlain's Voyages : Original narratives of early American history. 
CoLLiNGWOOD, W. G. and Stefansson Jon : A pilgrimage to the saga-steads 

of Iceland (1899) (with map showing Hop beside Hunafloi but not the 

connection between them, which is plain in larger maps.) 
CoLViN, V. : Plutarch's account of ancient voyages to the New World (with 

tidal figures along coast). 
Cook, O. F. : History of the coconut palm in America. Contributions from 

the National Herbarium, U. S. National Museum, Vol. 14, Part 2, 1910. 

New chapters in the history of the coconut palm. Amer. Anthr., 

1909. 

CoRDEiRA, A. : A history of the islands subject to Portugal in the Atlantic 

Ocean. 
CoRMACK, W. E. : Journey in search of the Red Indians in Newfoundland. 

Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, Vol. 6, 1829. 
Crantz, D. : The history of Greenland. 

Dall, W. H. : Alaska and its resources. 

Dalorto, Angelinus : Map of 1325. With monograph of A. Magnaghi en- 
titled La Carta Nautica Constuita nel 1325 da Angelino Dalorta. In 
record of third Italian Geographical Cong. In honor of Toscanelli 
and Vespuccio. Monograph and map also issued separately. 

Daly, D. : The legend of St. Brandan (Celtic Review, Vol. i). 

A sequel to the voyage of St. Brandan (Celtic Review, January 

13, 1909). 

Daly, R. A.: The geology and scenery of the Northeast Coast. (Illustrated 
by map with measurements of elevation at divers points of the New- 
foundland and Labrador coasts since glacial times.) (Labrador, etc., 
by W. T. Grenfell and others.) 

The origin of the Innuit. The tribes of the extreme Northwest. 

Dasent, G. : Translation of Saga of Njal the Burnt, with introduction. 
Davis, C. A. : Salt marsh formation near Boston and its geological signifi- 

j cance. Economic Geology, Vol. 5 (1910). 

Davis, John : Voyages and works of. Edited by A. H. Markham, 1880. 
Dawson, J. W. : Acadian geology. 

Fossil man. 

Geology and natural history of Nova Scotia. 

Dawson, S. E. : The St. Lawrence, its basin and border lands. 1905. 
Debes, L. J.: Faroe and Faeroa referata. (Description of the islands and 

inhabitants of Faroe.) 
De Costa, B. F. : A.rctic exploration. Amer. Geogr. Soc. Bull., 1880. 

The Pre-Columbian discovery of America, by the Northmen, 

illustrated by translations from the Icelandic Sagas. Albany, 1868. 

■ Note on Boggild's article (Hist. Mag. March, 1869). 



\) 



4 



[ 



182 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

Dellenbaugh, F. S. : The North Americans of yesterday. Pop. Sci. 

Monthly, Vol. 27. 
Denys, N. : Description and natural history of coasts of North America 

(Acadia). Translated and edited by W. F. Ganong. Champlain 

Society, Toronto. 
De Roo, p. : History of America before Columbus according to documents 

and approved authors. Vol. i, American aborigines. Vol. 2, European 

immigrants. Philadelphia and London, 1900. 
Dicuil: De Mensura Orbis Terrani. 
DiESERUD, Juul: Norse discoveries in America. Reprint from Bull. Amer. 

Geogr. Soc, Vol. 23. New York, 1901. Separate. 
DiMAN, J. L. : Critique of De Costa's " Pre-Columbian Discovery." North 

American Review, Vol. 109, July, 1869. 
Donnelly, I. : Atlantis, the antediluvian world. 
Du Bois, B. H. : Did the Norse discover America. Mag. Amer. History, 

Vol. 27, 1892. 
DuLCERT, Angeling, of Majorca (usually identified with the Italian Angelinus 

Dalorto). Map of 1339 — The first to show The Fortunate Islands of 

St. Brandan, the Madeiras. Reproduced in Nordenskjold's Periplus. 

Discussed by Hannay and others. 

Eden, R. : Translation of Peter Martyr d' Anghiera's " Decades of the New 

World." 
Edrisi : Geographic d' Edrisi. Translation by P. A. Jaubert, Paris, 1836-40. 
Egede, Hans : A description of Greenland, showing the natural history, 

situation and face of the country Translated from the Danish. 

London, 1745. 2d ed. 1818. 
Encyclopedia Brittanica articles on the Azores, Iceland, and other relevant 

titles. 
Erlingsson, Th. : Ruins of the Saga time. 
Erondelle's translation of Lescarbot's " Nova Francia." 
Espinosa, Alonso de: The Guanches of Tenerifife, etc. (Edited by C. R. 

Markham ; published by Hakluyt Society.) 
Everett. E. : The discovery of America by the Norsemen (North American 

Review, Vol. 98, 1838). 

Fernald, M. L. : Notes on the plants of Wineland the Good. " Rhodora," 

Feb., 1910. Journ. New England Botanical Club. 
Fewkes, J. W. : A zoological reconnoissance in Grand Manan. Amer. 

Naturalist, Vol. 24, May, 1890. 
Fischer, J. : The discoveries of the Norsemen in America, with special refer- 
ence to their cartographical representation ; from the German by B. H. 

Soulsby, London, 1903. 
Fiske, John: The discovery of America with some account of ancient 

America and the Spanish Conquest. 2 Vols., Boston and New York, 

1892. 
Eraser, W. : Brasil (Royal Geogr. Soc. of Ireland, 1879-1880). 
Friederici, G. : Verbreitung von Steinschleuder und Blasrohr in Amerika 

(A. Petermans Geographische Mitteilungen, 191 1, heft 2, plate 13). 
Fundy, Bay of: Hydrographic Office chart of. 



NO. 19 NORSE \'ISITS TO NORTH AIMERICA — BAECOCK 183 

FoRMALEONi, V.: Essai sur la marine ancicnne des venitiens. (D. Henin 
Fr. Trans., 1788.) 

Description de deux cartes ancienne (Bianco, 1436, is one found 

/ with above). 

^ Gaffarel, Paul : Histoire de la decouverte de I'Amerique depuis les origines 

/ jusqua la mort de Christopher Colomb. — Rousseau, Ed. 1892. 

V/ Galvao : The discovery of the World. (Reports visit to Antillia in 1447.) 
Ganong, G. W. : LeClerc's new relation of Gaspasia. Translated with intro- 
duction. 

Monographs of the place, nomenclature, etc., of New Brunswick 

(numerous papers in Froc. and Trans. Royal Soc. Canada). 

Ganong, W. F. : Translation of Deny's " Coasts of North America." 

Geike, a. : Fragments of earth lot e. 

Gessner, a. : Elevations and depressions of the earth in North America, 
1861 (supposed depression at Louisbourg, N. S.) Journ. Geol. Soc, Lon- 
don, Vol. 18. 

Gosling, W. G. : Labrador : Its discovery, exploration and development. 
/ New York, 191 1. 

V Graah, W. a. : Narrative of an expedition to the East Coast of Greenland 
Translated from the Danish by G. Gordon /Macdougall. Lon- 
don, 1837. 

Greenwood, J.: Letter 1730. Amer. Anthr., 1908 (in paper by David Bush- 
nell, Jr., " An Early Account of Dighton Rock.") 

Grenfell, W. T., and Others : Labrador, the country and the people. New 
York, 1909. 

Gudmuncson and Erlendson's appendix to Cornelia Horsford's " Vinland 
and its Ruins." 

Vi Hagar, S. : Origin of American aborigines. Astronomy, read Dec. 27, 191 1, 
in symposium of Amer. Assoc. Adv. Sci. Amer. Anthr., Vol. 14, 1912. 
Hakluyt's principal voyages (1904). Vol. 7. 
— Voyages of the English Nation. Hakluyt Soc, Book i, 1897. 



Haliburton, R. G. : A search in British North America for lost colonies 
of Northmen and Portuguese. Proc. Royal Geogr. Soc, N. S., Vol. 7, 
London, 1885. 

\j Lost Colonies of Northmen and Portuguese. Pop. Sci. iMonthly, 

Vol. 26. 

Hamy, J. T. E. : Hist, and etudes geographique. Appendix i concerning 
Dulcert's map of 1339. 

Hannay''s History of Acadia. 

Hardiman, J.: The history of Galway. 
\f Harrisse, H. : The discovery of North America. London, 1892. 

Article on the discovery by Cabot. (Trans. Royal Society Can- 
ada, 1898.) 

Harshberger, J. W. : Maize, a botanical and economical study. Lhiiversity 
of Pennsylvania Publications, 1893. 

Hawes, C. H. : In the uttermost East; being an account of investigations 
among the natives and Russian convicts of the island of Sakhalin, 
.... New York, 1904. 
13 



184 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

Hermannsson, H. : The Northmen in America, 982 — C1500. A contribution 

to the bibHography of the subject. " Islandica/' published by Cornell 

University Library. 94 pp. 1909. 
Hertzberg, E., cited by Nansen, Fr. : The Norsemen in America. Geographi- 
cal Journal, London, Vol. 38. 
Heimskringla : S. Laing's translation of. 
HiGGiNsoN, T. W. and MacDonald: History of the United States from 

986 to 1905. Edition of 1905. 
Hill- Tout, C. : Oceanic origin of the Kwakiatl-Nootka and Salish stocks of 

British Columbia (Trans. Royal Society Canada, 1898). 
V HoLAND, H. R. : The Kensington rune stone. Records of the Past, Jan. -Feb., 

1910. Washington, D. C. 
Holm, G. F. : Explorations of the east coast of Greenland. Meddelelser om 

Gronland, Vol. 6, Copenhagen, 1882. 
Holmes, W. H. : Some problems of the American race. Amer. Anthrop. 

Vol. 12, No. 2, 1910. 
yj Horn's History of the literature of the Scandinavian North. Anderson's 

translation. 1884. 
HoRNADAY, W. T. : The extermination of the bison. Ann. Rep. U. S. Nat. 
y Mus., 1887. 

'"''^ HoRSFORD, Cornelia : Vinland and its ruins. In Appleton's Pop. Sci. 

Monthly, Vol. 56, No. 2. 1899. 

The graves of the Norsemen. 

■ Dwellings of the Saga-time in Iceland. Greenland and Vinland. 

Nat. Geogr. Mag., Vol. 9, 1898. 
HoRSFORD, E. N. : The landfall of Leif Erikson, A. D. 1000 and the site of 

his homes in Vinland. Boston, 1892. 

The defence of Norumbega and a review of the reconnaissances 

of T. W. Higginson .... Boston and New York, 1891. 

The discovery of the ancient city of Norumbega. Boston, 1890. 

• Review of the problem of the Northmen .... Boston, 1890. 



\y 



HowLEY, M. F. : Vinland vindicated. Proc. and Trans. Royal Soc, Canada, 
i^. 

■ The ecclesiastical history of Newfoundland. Boston, 1888. 

Hrdlicka, Ales : Early man in South America. Bull. 52 Bur. Amer. Eth- 
nology, 1912. 

Skeletal remains suggesting or attributed to early man in North 

America. Bull. 33, Bur. Amer. Ethnology, 1907. 

Remains in eastern Asia of the race that peopled America. Smith- 



sonian Misc. Coll., Vol. 60, No. 16, 1912. 
Hull, Eleanor: Irish episodes of Icelandic history. Saga book of the 

Viking Club, Vol. 3. 
HuLBERT, A. B. : Indian thoroughfares (in historic highways of America). 
Humboldt, Alex, von : Examen Critique, etc., and Cosmos. 
HuTTON, S. K. : Among the Eskimo of Labrador. 

Jack, J. Allen : Stone found in New Brunswick. Smithsonian Report, 1881. 

Jaubert's translation of Edrisi's Geography. 

Jenks, a. E. : The wild rice gatherers of the L^pper Lakes. Nineteenth 

Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnology. 
Jochelson, W. : Mythology of the Koryak. Amer. Anthr. (1904). Vol. 6. 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 185 

Jomard's monuments, etc. 

Joyce, P. W. : The voyage of Maelduin. 

Kennan, George : Siberia and the exile system. 

Tent hfe in Siberia. 1910. 

Kirk's " Twenty-five years in British Guiana." 

/ Kohl, J. G. : History of the discovery of Maine. Portland, i86g. 

]\Iap collection of, in Library of Congress. 

KoHLMEiSTER and Knock, G. : Journal of a voyage from Okkak on the coast 

of Labrador to Ungava Bay, 1814. 
Kretschmer, K. : Die Entdeckung Amerikas (The discovery of America), 

with atlas. 
(/ KuNTSMANN, F. : The discovery of America, with atlas. 



/^ 



Lafreri's Atlas of Mediaeval maps. Rare copy in Library of Congress. 
..Laing's (S.) translation of the Heimskringla. 
■^ Lampy, Chas. L. : Article on stone near Hampton, N. H., as Thorvald's 
tomb. Quoted in Philadelphia Times, Jul}' 27, 1902. 
Landnamobok. 
Lee, Guy Carlton : History of America. 

Leland, C. G. : The Algonquin legends of New England. 1885. 

[/ The Edda among the Algonquin Indians. Atlantic Monthly, Aug., 

1884, p. 223. 
Lelewel's Atlas. 
Lescarbot, M. : Nova Francia. Erondelle's translation. 

Histoire de la Nouvelle France. 

Linguistic Map in Bull. 30, Bur. Amer. Ethnolog}-. 
Lloyd's (H.) translation, with notes, of history of Cambria. 

^Low, A. P. : Explorations in the Labrador peninsula. 

V Lucas, F. W. : The annals of the voyages of the brothers Zeno (1895). 

MacDougall, Alan : The Beothuk Indians. Trans. Royal Inst., Canada, 
1890-1891. 

McGee, W J : The Siouan Indians. Fifteenth Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Eth- 
nology'. 

V McLean, J. P. : Crit. Ex. Norse discovery of America (American Anti- 

quarian, Vol. 14). 
Magnaghi, a.: II Mappomondo del Genovese Angelinus de Dalorto (1325). 

(Papers of the Third Italian Geographical Congress, 1899. Separate 

with map.) 
Major, R. H. : The voyages of the Venetian brothers Zeno. 

The site of the lost colony of Greenland determined, etc. (and 

other works by same author). 

Mallery, G. : Pictographs, etc. (Fourth Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. Ethnology.) 
Maps and Papers of the Italian Geographical Congresses. 
.Markham, a. H. : The voyages and works of John Davis. Edited in 1880. 
\/ Markham, C. R. : Voyages of Baffin. (In part Catonle's Relation.) 

On the origin and migrations of the Greenland Esquimaux. In 

Journ. Roy. Geogr. Soc, Vol. 35, London, 1865 ; also in Arctic papers 
for expedition of 1875. 



l86 SMITHSOXIAX MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

Martyr, Peter: Decades of the New World (Eden's translation). 
Meade, William : The old churches, ministers and families of Virginia. 
Miller, W. J. : King Philip and the Wampanoags of Rhode Island. 
Minnesota Historical Society: The Kensington rune stone (Report with 

route map modified from that of J. T. Smith; and adverse addenda). 
Mooney, J.: The Powhatan Confederacy. Amer. Anthr. (1907). 

■ The Siouan tribes of the East. 

Morgan, L. H.: The league of the Iroquois. 1904. Lloyd's notes 'in. 
Morley, S. G. : The correlation of JNIaya and Christian chronology. Amer. 

Journ. Archeol. (1910.) 
Morris and Magnusson's translation of The Eyrbyggia (Ere dwellers) Saga. 
MouLTON, J. W. : History of the State of New York. 
Munoz : Hist, del Nuevo Mundo. 
IMunro, W. H. : The history of the town of Bristol, R. I. 

Nansen, Fr. : Eskimo life. London, 1893. 

In northern mists. Translated b\' A. G. Chater, 191 1. 

The first crossing of Greenland. 

The Norsemen in America. Geogr. Journ., Vol. 38. 

The race for the South Pole. Scribner's Mag., ^larch, 1912. 

Nelson. E. W. : The Eskimo about Bering Strait. (Eighteenth Ann. Rep. 

Bur. Amer. Ethnology, 1896-97.) 
Narragansett Bay: U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey chart of. 
Nordenskjold, a. E. : Periplus. .An essay on the early charts and sailing 

directions, translated from the Swedish original by Francis .A.. Bather. 

Stockholm, 1897. 

Facsimile atlas. 

NuTT, Alfred: The voyage of Bran London, 1895-97. 



\ Olaus Magnus: A compendious history, etc., Streeter's translation. (His 
map is very fully given on large scale in Lafreri's atlas.) 

Oldham, H. Yule : A Pre-Columbian discovery of South America. Geogr. 
Journ., Vol. 5, p. 225, 1895. Advocates hypothesis of voyage from Cape 
Verde Islands to America as indicated by A. Bianco's map of 1448, 
which it copies. Discussed by Royal Geog. Society. 

Old South Leaflets. 

Olson, J. E. : The voyages of the Norsemen. Original narratives of early 
American history. Vol. i. 
I Original N.^rratives of early American history. Vol. i. 

Osgood's " The Maritime Provinces." 

Packard, A. S. : The coast of Labrador, 1891. 

— Who first saw the Labrador coast? Journ. Amer. Geogr. Soc, 

Vol. 20. New York, 1888. 
Papers and Maps of the Italian Geographical Congresses. 
Patterson, George: The Beothuks or Red Indians of Newfoundland. Proc. 

and Trans. Royal Soc, Canada, Vol. 9. Montreal, 1892. 
Payne, E. J.: The age of discovery. Cambridge Modern History, Vol. i. 

The history of the new world called America. Oxford, 1892. 

Pierce's Report to U. S. Government on Iceland (1868). 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 187 

V Poole, H. S. : Subsidence of the Atlantic coast line of Nova Scotia. (The 

Sunken Land of Bus.) Trans. Nova Scotian Inst. Sci., Vol. 2, 1902. 

V PooRE, B. : Address mentioning Norsemen's visit. Proceedings 250th Anni- 

versary of Ipswich, Mass. 
Powell, D., Editor : History of Cambria, with notes. 
*^' Power, L. C. : The whereabouts of Vinland. New England .^lag., Vol. 13. 
Prich.^rd, H. V. H. : Through trackless Labrador. 
Proceedings and Tr.ans.\ctions Royal Society of Canada. 1898 (Cabot's map 

legends). 1904 (Indian sites, Grand Alanan, etc.). Also most other 

years. 
Proctor's translation of Laxdaela Saga. 

R.\FN, C.-\RL Christian : Antiquitates Americarse. Copenhagen, 1837. 

[Abstracts of the historical evidence for the discovery of America by 
the Scandinavians in the tenth century. Extracted from above. In 
Journ. Roy. Geogr. Soc. of London, Vol. 8, 1838.] 

V R.'^u, C. : Observations on cup shaped and other lapidarian sculptures. Con- 

tributions to North American Ethnology. L^. S. Geol. and Geogr. 
Survey, Vol. 5. 

R.wenstein, E. G. : Martin Behaim. His life and works. 1908. 

Reeves, A. 'W. : The finding of Wincland the Good. The history of the 

Icelandic discovery of America Vol. LXXII, 205 pp., London, 

1895. 

Revue Celtioue. (Various volumes.) 

Rhys, Sir J. : The birth, life and acts of King Arthur Text by Mal- 
ory. Introduction by Rhys. 

Studies in the Arthurian Legend Oxford, 1890. 

Riggs, S. C. : The Dakota, etc. Edited by J. O. Dorsey (Contributions, 

Geogr. and Geol. Survey). 
Rink, H. J. : Danish Greenland, its people and its products. Edited by 

Dr. Robert Brown, London, 1877. 

On the descent of the Eskimo. Arctic papers for the expedition 

of 1875. Journ. Anthr. Inst., 1872. 

Tales and traditions of the Eskimo with a sketch of their habits, 



1/ 



religion, language and other peculiarities. Translated from the Danish 
by the author. Edited by Robert Brown. Edinburgh and London, 1875. 

Robinson, Conway : An account of discoveries, etc. 

Robinson, E. C. : In an unknown land. 

RoDOLico, NicoLo: Di una carta nautica di Giacomo Bertran, Maiorchino Atti 
Congresso Geographico Italico 3. Florence, 1898, p. 546. 

RossELLi, P. : Map of 1468. 

Sagas concerning the Norse visits to America in facsimile Icelandic type and 
English translation with relevant auxiliary data and notes, in Reeves's 
The Finding of Wineland the Good. 

In general translated in Origines Islandicae, the series of JNIorris 

and iMagnusson, the publications of the Viking Club, and the separate 
works of Dasent, Proctor, and others. Comparatively few are left 
untranslated. 



l88 SMITHSONIAX MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

ScHARFF, R. T. : Origin of European fauna. Proc. Royal Irish Acad., Vol. 
4, Series 3, p. 427 ; Vol. 8, Sec. B, p. 268, 1902. 

Some remarks on the Atlantis problem. Proc. Royal Irish Acad., 

Vol. 24, p. 275. 

Schoolcraft, H. R. : Indian tribes of the United States. Drake's edition, 

Vol. 6 (and various other issues of the work under other titles). 
ScHOTT, G. : Geographic des Atlantisschen Ozeans. 1912. 
/ Scisco, L. D. : The tradition of Huitramannaland. Amer. Hist. CNIag., 3. 
ScoRESBY, Wm. : An account of the Arctic regions. 
Shaler, N. S. : Aspects of the earth New York. 1889. 

Nature and man in America. New York, 1891. 

^ Shipley, Marie A. : The Icelandic discovery of America. 

Skene, W. F. : The four ancient books of Wales Edinburgh, 1868. 

Slafter, E. F. : The discovery of America by the Northmen. 

Smith, J. T. : The discovery of America by the Norsemen in the Tenth 

Century, comprising translations of all the most important original 

narratives of the event ; together with critical examination of their 

authenticity, to which is added an examination of the comparative 

merits of the Northmen and Columbus. Boston, 1839, London, 1842. 
^ (Map also copied in Minn. Hist. Soc. Report.) 

SouLSBY. B. H. : Translation of Fischer's The discoveries of the Northmen in 

America, etc. 
Southey, Robert: The history of Brazil. Vol. i. Appended notes. 
Spencer, Herbert : Descriptive sociology. 
Spinden, H. J. : A study of Maya art and its subject matter and historical 

development, 1913. 
Stearns, W. H. : Labrador. 
Stefansson, Jon: Iceland, its history and inhabitants. Smithsonian Report 

for 1906. Published, 1907. 
i Stefansson, V.: The Icelandic colony in Greenland. (Amer. Anthr.) 

Stephens, J. L. : Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas, and 

Yucatan. With illustrations by F. Catherwood. London, 1854. 

Incidents of travel in Yucatan. New York, 1843-1847. 

Stephens, Thomas : Aladoc : An essay on the discovery of America by 

Madoc ap Owen in the Twelfth Century. London and New York, 

1893. 
Stevenson, E. L. : Portulan charts, 191 1. Hispanic Society of America. 
" Stokes, Whitley: The voyage of Maelduin (Revue Celtique, Vol. *9). 

The voyage of Snedgus (Revue Celtique, Vol. 9). 

■ The voyage of the Hui Corra (Revue Celtique, Vol. 14). 



1/ 



Storm, Gustav: Studies on the Vineland voyages. English translation in 
Memoires de la Societe Royale des Antiquaires du Nord, 1888. Copen- 
hagen, also separate. 64 pp. 1889. 

Strabo: Hamilton's translation. 

Strachey, W. : The histoire of travaile into Virginia Britannia, .... Lon- 
don, 1849. 

Studi Bibliografici e biografici (first and second Italian Geographical Con- 
gresses). 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 189 

Thalbitzer, W. : A phonetical study of the Eskimo language. " Medd. om 
Gronland," Vol. 31. Copenhagen, 1904. 

TheveTj a.: The new found world or Antarctic (Racket's translation, 
1568). 
^v/^ Thomas, C. and McGee, W J: Prehistoric North America. Vol. 19, Lee's 
y Hist, of America. 

Tillinghast's monograph in Vol. i of Winsor's narrative and critical history 
of America. 

ToRF^us, T. : Gronlandia Antiqua. 

''' History of ancient Vinland (Shea's Trans. Cath. Hist. Mag., 1888, 

N. S.). 

Trumbull, J. H. : Indian names of places in and on the borders of Connecti- 
cut, with interpretations of some of them. Hartford, 1881. 

Tucker, E. W. : Five months in Labrador and Newfoundland. 

Turner, L. W. : The Hudsorv Bay Eskimo. Eleventh Ann. Rep. Bur. Amer. 
Ethnol., 1889-1890. 

Verrazano's voyage. Translation in Old South Leaflets. 
ViGFUSSON, G. : Prolegomena to the Sturlunga Saga. Oxford, 1878. 
V .ViGFtJssoN and Powell: Origines Islandicae. 
V ViNiNG, E. P. : An inglorious Columbus. 

Wallace, A. R. : Narrative of travels on the Amazon. 

The Geographical Distribution of Animals, Vol. i. 

■ Island Life. 

Wallace, Dillon : The long Labrador trail. 

The lure of the Labrador wild. 

Wallace, W. S. : Historical introduction in " Labrador, the Country and 

People," by W. T. Grenfell and others. 
Wallace, James : A description of the Isles of Orkney, 1693. (John Small, 

editor, 1886). 
Watt, W. J. : Across the Vatna Jokull. 
Weare, G. E. : Cabot's discovery of North America, Vol. i. 
Weise, a. J. : The discoveries of America to the year 1525. 
Westropp, T. J. : Brazil and the legendary islands of the North Atlantic. 

(Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. 30, Sec. C, No. 8.) 
I Whitbourne, Sir Richard: x\ discourse and discovery of Newfoundland. 

.... London, 1622. 
WiLL.\RD, Emma: History of the United States. 
Willsox, Beckles : Nova Scotia, The province that has been passed over. 

(Includes a few pages on the Norse visits and Yarmouth inscriptions.) 
WiNSOR, Justin : Qiristopher Columbus and how he received and imparted the 

spirit of discovery. 1891. 

From Cartier to Frontenac. 

— > • Christopher Columbus. 

Narrative and critical history of America, Vol. i. 

Wright, G. F. : The great ice age. 

The Greenland ice fields. 



INDEX. 

PAGE 

Acadian Bay, coincidence of names at 53 

depression of shore at 115 

Thorvald at 69 

Adam of Bremen, account of Wineland by.... 56, 57, 90, 160, 161, 163, 

166, 171, 172 
Africa in relation to America. .. .8, 9, 10, n, 15, 18. 20, 21, 60, 61, 63, 94, 

139- 167, 170, 174 

Age of discovery, The (Payne) 21 

Albania, name for asserted region 30 

Alberta, winter grazing in ; 131 

Aleut, Holm on 153 

Alexander the Great at tlie Azores 18 

Algonquian myths, Leland on 50 

Algonquian family 5, 6, 7, 121, 128, 129, 140. 145, 147 

Allen, J. A., history of American bison 148 

Almachouqui Algonquians 128 

Al-Tin, origin of " Antillia " 18 

" America of the Spaniards " 29, 63, 171 

American characteristic coast (Wonderstrands) . . . .69, 80, 102, 112, 113, 

116. 135, 162 
American Indians. See Indians, Eskimo, and Skrellings. 

American race (Brinton) 2, 146 

Amerinds (See Indians and Skrellings) 3 

Amund, Bishop of Skalholt 39, 40 

Angels in bird-form 14 

Anticosti, Eskimo at 140 

Antillia, Island of 17, 18, 19, 20, 25 

Antilles, The 20, 21, 26 

Antiquitates Americanse, cited 28, 44, 60, 74, 136 

Appalachian region, bison in 148 

Aquidneck Island, carven rock at 45. 138 

Arabic names 12 

Araucanians, Spanish Chilians absorbed by 36 

Arctic Foxes mentioned in Saga loi, 106 

Ari. (See Erode & Marsson.) 

Ari the Wise 28, 58, 59, 142. 152, 161, 165 

Arne Magnean Codex 770 6b 

Arne ^lagnean Codex 194 60 

Arne iMagnean Codex 557 (Eric the Red ) 66 

Arne Magnean collection 28, 64 

Arnold, Bishop of Greenland c;5 

Arnold, Governor, windmill of 44 

Arthurian Legend of Iceland 12, 141 

191 



192 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

PAGE 

Asia, migration from 2, 3, 4, 7, 140 

Asma\da or Asmaida, location of 17, 25 

Athapascan Indians 3, 5, 140 

" Atillie " (the word) on Pizigani map 1367 59 

Atlantic Ocean 3, ir, 17, 18, 26, 35, 46, 74, 107, 130, 163 

Atlantis, legend of 10, 18 

Avalon Peninsula 108, 109, 156 

Avezac, M. de 8, 11, 16, 18, 24 

Ayllon, de, Colony of 63 

Azores 8, 9. 10, ir, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22. 24, 128, 162 

Aztecs 6, 156 

Back Bay, Boston, Hop at 48, 49, 136 

Bacon, E. M., cited 45, 46, 131 

Baffin Bay, miniature monument at 43 

Baffin Land. Thorfinn at Si 54 

Bahamas, asserted early visits to 14. I5 

Ballads in Saga 79 

Bancroft. H. H.. cited 7, I57 

Bandelier, A. F., on use of sling 156 

Bardsen. Ivar. relief expedition in 1337 39, 78, 94, 143 

Baron of Castine, mentioned 49 

Basque fishermen, voyages of 9, 49, 52, I74 

Bear Island, Greenland 33> 97 

Beauvois. E.. cited 29, 40 

Beccaria's (Becharius) map (1435) considered 19,20,25 

Behaim globe (1492), inscription as to Antillia 19 

Belle Isle Strait 108, in, 156 

Benincasa Map ( 1482) considered I9. 25 

Beothuk (Beothik) Indians in Newfoundland. .. .5, 6, 42, 109, 121, 144, 

153, 154. 156 

Bering Strait 2, 144 

Bermudas, possible early visits to 12, 26 

Bertran. G.. map considered 19 

Bianco Map ( 1436) considered 19, 20, 25, 26 

Biarni, death of 105 

discovery by 69 

Blarney Island 33, 108, no, 162 

Biggar, H. P., cited 33 

Biorn. lost Saga of 28, 29, 160 

Biornsland 54 

Bird Islands 61, 62, 102, 119, 120, 162 

Bison, American, former distribution of 147, 148, 149 

Blacksark, Greenland 66 

Bleekman and Newton cited 107 

Blome, R., cited 108 

Blood feud in Iceland 31 

Blowguns 157 

Boats, Eskimo and Indian 139. 150, 157 

Boats, Norse 100, loi, 108, 1 12, 159 

Boggild, F., cited 48 



KO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK I93 

PAGE 

Bonavista Bay, forests at 108 

Boston as Norse site 46, 47, 48, 49, 129, 136, 139 

Botoner's voyage of 1480 21 

Bran, Voyage of 12, 159 

Brandan, Saint 13-16, 159 

Brand, Bishop ■. . . ^7 

Bras d'Or 1 10, 1 12 

Brattahlid, Greenland 34, 83, 85, 86 

Brazil, Island of 17, 21-26, 36, ()2, 166, 172, 174 

Brazil-wood 24, 172 

Brazir, Ysole 21 

Brereton's voyages 57, I45 

Breton fishermen 49, 50, 174^ 

Brinton, D. G., cited 2, 6, 27, 146, 153 

Brion Island 22 

Bristol, England 21, 172, 174 

Bristol, R. 1 131, 137. 138 

Brittany 8, 10, 25, 42, III 

Broadfirth, Iceland 32 

Brown, Professor, on coast uplift 114 

Bryniolf, Bishop 64, 74 

Bugge, S., cited 63, 86 

Bus, sunken land of 17 

Buxelle (or Brazil) Island 24 



Cabeza de Vaca 41 

Cabot, John 9, 21, 22, 23, 26, 109, 116, 155, 156, 172, 174 

Cabot, Sebastian 155, 156, 172 

Cabot Strait 23, no. 171 

Cabot turned southward from course 71 

Cabral, landfall of 9, 20, 163, 174 

Caddo Indians 145 

Cadiz, Phenician town 8, 9, 10 

Cambrensis, Giraldus 2>~ 

Campobello, Bay of Fundy 117, 118 

Canaria, Ysola 16 

Canary Islands 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 21, 57, 163, 164, 167 

Canoes, Indian and Eskimo 121, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154 

Canso, Strait of 41, 62 

Cantwell, E., cited 14 

Cape Ann 127, 128, 135, 136 

Cape Breton Island 23, 29, 42, 62, no, 112, 113, 129, 130, 156, 170, 171 

Cape Charles 112 

Cape Cod 29, 44, 46, 89, no, in, 116, 123, 128, 145, 149 

Cape Harrison 106 

Cape Hatteras 29 

Cape Henlopen 112 

Cape of Good Hope 11 



194 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

PAGE 

Cape Race 8 

Cape Verde Islands 11 

Caporizzia Island, Capraria, Legname, Madeira 16 

Capraria (Legname) Island 16 

Caradog of Llancarvan, his history of Cambria 36 

Caribbean Sea g 

Carmack, W. O., cited 42, 109 

Carolina coast i6g 

Carthage, Phenicians of 10 

Cartier, cited 2t„ 43, 57, 62, 109, 120, 133, 135, 156 

Cartland, J. H., cited 50 

Cartwright, Capt 6, 42, 109, 120, 153 

Carving. Innuit 150, 151 

Casco Bay 127 

Castine, " rune stone " at 50 

Catalan Map ( 1375) 16, 21 

Cave hunting (Dawkins) 150 

Celts 9, 12 

Celtic Review, cited 14 

Chamberlain, A. F., cited 3 

Chambers, Robt. W., cited 53 

Champlain's voyages. .. .5, 42, 48, 49, 51, 57. 71, 78, 92, no, 119, 122, 123, 

124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 132. 134, 154 

Champlain's Cape Ann costume line 127, 128 

Charles River 46, 47, 48, 49 

Chart of derelicts (Horsford) 8, 71 

Chatham Harbor 127 

Chesapeake Bay 4, 5. 29, 63, 108, no, 116, 124, 131, 145, 154, 167 

Chesapeake Peninsula 113 

Chickahominy Indians 4 

Chile 4 

Chincoteague ponies 132 

Chinese and Cambodian resemblances in sculpture 7 

Christie, M., cited 23 

Climatic changes along American Coast 94 

Coast of Desolation , 33 

Coast uplift and depression 114, 115 

Cobequid hills. Nova Scotia 130 

Cocoa palm, O. F. Cook on distribution of : 7 

Collingwood, W. G., cited 135 

Columbus. Christopher i, 9, 11, 14, 19, 20, 26, 49, 128, 163, 172, 174, 175 

Colvin, v., cited 117 

Compass, early lack of 8 

Conigi Island 10 

Connecticut, Indian names in 138 

Connecticut River 6 

Conquest of Iceland (Apochryphal) by Arthur 12, 141 

Cook, O. F., cited 7 

Cooper, James Fenimorc, cited 147 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK I95 

PAGE 

Copan, Cambodian figures at 7 

Cornu du Gallia 41- m 

Correlation of Maya and Christian chronology ( Morley ) 6 

Cortereal's voyage 108, 156 

Corvo Island i r, 20, 21 

Costa, B. R, de 12, 34, 48, 79, 171 

Costumes (Indian) 125. 127, 128, 141, 149, 151, 155 

Crags mentioned in Saga 138. 158 

Crossness, burial at 70 

Crusaders, tithes for 171 

Cuba and neighboring islands called Antilles 20 

Cuba compared with Antillia as to position, etc 19 

Cup stones, Indian 45 

Currents, ocean 9, 117. 118, 124, 127, 128 

Dakota Indians 149. I53 

Dall, W. H., cited 2, 125, 144 

Dalorto map, 1325 '. 17. 22 

Daly, Dominick, cited 13. I5 

Dal3% R. A., on coast uplift 114 

Dams. Indian 46, 47 

Danforth, Dr.. cited 44 

Danish Greenland (Rink) 33, 39, 4.3. 44. 95 

Dagmalastad (breakfast time) 73 

D'Avezac, iM.. cited 8, 11. 16. 18, 24 

Davies, cited 36 

Davis, C. A., cited 1 14. I37 

Davis, John, cited 33. 108. 150. 155 

Davis Strait 33 

Dawkins, Boyd, cited 150 

Dawson, S. E., cited 92 

De Ayllon, colony of 63 

De Costa. B. F., cited 12, 34, 48. 79, 171 

Debes, L. J., cited 177 

Delaware coast 116 

Delaware. Indians of 47 

Dellenbaugh, F. S., cited 153 

'■ Demon's head," of Indians 157, 158 

De Mont's colonists 49. 122 

Denys. N., cited 117. 1 19 

Depression, glacial of upper American coast 113. 114, 115. 116 

Depression of shore of Acadian Bay 115 

Depression, post glacial, of American coast below Maine 37, 164 

De Soto in Carolina 149 

Derelicts, movements of 8 

De Roo. P.. cited 14 

Devil Rock 25 

Dicuil, Irish geographer 27 

Dieserud, Juul i, 54, 75. 94 

Digby, Nova Scotia ' 52, 121 



196 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

PAGE 

Dighton rock pictures 44, 45. I37 

Diman, J. L., cited 79 

Diodorus Siculus, Phenician legend of 8, 21 

Disco Island 33 

Dogs, Indian and Eskimo 139, 150, 151 

" Doegr," meaning of loi, 106, 1 10, 129 

Dolmen-like stone structure of Malicete Indians 120 

Dorchester flats 48 

Dragon on maps 18, 21 

Drogio or Drogeo 40. 41 

Du Challu's " Viking Age " cited 50 

Duelling in Iceland 31 

Du Guast, River 49 

Dulcert map, 1339 16 

Earthly paradise, legend of 14, 15 

Easter Island 9 

Eastern settlement, Greenland 39 

East-outland 40 

Eastport, Maine 74, 117, 118, 121 

Eddie Poems, Home of the ( Bugge) 86 

Edrisi's geography 10, 11, 18, 38, 106, 167, 171 

Egede, Hans, cited 39, 40, 51 

Egg-islands > 61, 62, 102, 119, 120, 162 

Egypt, ships of 9 

Elevation, post glacial, of upper Atlantic coast 113, 114, 115, 116, 164 

Elymus arenarius (strand oats) 94, 95, 132, 133 

English settlement relics 5, 46, 47, 50, 52 

Eric the Red 26, 31, 32, 33, 34, 44, 52, 55, 56, 58, 59, 67, 69, 81, 97, 

105, no, 120, 161 

Eric Gnupson, Bishop 54. 55. 170 

Eric, King 61 

Ericsfirth or Gardar 82, 83 

Ericsson, Leif. {See Leif.) 

Ernulphus 14 

Erondelle translation of Nova Francia, cited.. .40, 56, 71, 92, 123, 130, 133, 134 

Escociland as perhaps the original form of the name Estotiiand 40, 62 

Eskimo.... 2, 3, 5, 6, 34, 39, 51, 109, 121, 130, 139, 140, 142, 145, 147, 149, 

150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 160, 167 

Eskimo Legends 53. I09 

Espinosa, Father 14. i5. 16 

Essequibo River I5- 

Estotiiand 40, 41. 62, 172 

European Islands, v^'estern visitors to 8 

Examen Critique (Humboldt) cited 7, 8, 74 

Explosive body used by Indians I57. 158 

Eyktarstad of the sun 73 

Eyrbyggia Saga 28, 59, 99 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK I97 

PAGE 

Fagundes expedition 49 

Fairy Lake 52 

Fairy lands 165, 166 

Fall River 44, 158 

Faroe Islands 8, 27, 38, 62, 131, 177 

Feather Islands, The 6-1, 62 

Fernald, M. L., cited 91, 132, 151 

Fewkes, J. W., cited 49, 52, 117, 118, 124 

Finding of Wineland the Good (The), cited.... 29, 56, 59, 60, 61, 64, 66, 

68, 71, 75, 102, 103, 107, 129 

Finland, referred to as Vinland 54 

Finn, applied to three races 167 

Fiord-cut shore 118 

Fiord separating Wineland from " America of the Spaniards " 63, 171 

Fischer, J., cited 40, 1 72 

Fishing devices, Indian 47 

Fish mentioned in Saga 131 

Fiske, John, cited 7, 27, 33, 41, 71, 74, 75, 94, 95, 139, 141, 148, 156, 157 

Flateybook 28, 56, 61, 64, 65, 67, iii, 116, 118, 162 

Flateybook Wineland Saga, The 64, 65, 66, 68, 70, 71, 74, 116, 143, 162 

Flom, Mr., cited 54 

Flores, (Azores) 11, 20, 25 

Forest Land 16, 17, 26, 62 

Fortunate Islands 14, 15, 16, 57, 162, 163, 165, 167 

Fortunate Islands of St. Brandan 16, 17, 163, 166 

Fountain of youth 15 

Foxes, Arctic loi, 106 

Fox grapes 164, 170 

Freducci maps considered 19 

Freydis, Eric's daughter 66, 70 

Friederici, Dr., cited 156 

Frisbok, mentioned 59 

Frisland 38. 62, 173 

Frobisher's voyages 17, 150 

Frode, Ari 28, 58, 59, 142, 152, 161, 165 

Frodis Water 151 

Fuegians, stature of 145 

Fundy, Bay of 6, 23, 51, 52, 62, 72, 92, 112, 117, 118, 119, 120, 124, 126, 

130, 133, 154, 170 

Funk Island 62, 102, 120, 153 

Furdurstrandir (The Wonderstrands) 80, 102, 104, 113, 116, 160 

Gaddiano map , 16 

Gaelic runners 118 

Gallia, cornu du 41, iii 

Games, Indian 51 

Gardar, Greenland 34, 39, 43, 73 

Geoflfrey of Monmouth, Arthurian conquest related by 12 

Geographical formula 60 



198 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

PAGE 

Gessner on depression of coast 115 

Gilyaks, Saghalien 147 

Glacial depression of American coast 3, 113, 114 

Glacial era, land elevation since 113, 114, T15 

Eskimo advanced northward since 140 

Godthaab, Greenland 107, 155 

Gold in Mexico 149 

Gomez, expedition of 49. 92 

Gosnold, cited 44, 145, 149 

Graah, W. A., cited 43 

Grain and grapes, wild 56, 57, 123, 130. 132, 133, 134, 135, 160, 161, 

162, 163, 164. 165, 168, 169 

Grajales, cited 155 

Grand Manan Channel 69, 73, 74, 112, 117 

Grand Manan, Norsemen at.. ..51, 72, 74, 105, 113, 117, 119, 121, 122, 126, 

130, 169, 170 

Graves of Thorbrand and Thorvald 49, 70 

Grape problem examined 90-94, 124, 130, 163. 164, 165, 168 

Grapes, wild 56, 57, 123, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135, 160, 161, 162 

Grazing, fine 121, 131, 132 

Great Falls of the Potomac 48 

Great Ireland 21, 26, 27, 29, 30, 59, 105, 165, 169 

Great Sweden 2^, 28 

Greek craft's landfall 8 

Greek myths of western islands 7, 9, 162 

Greenland 8, 17, 52, 55, 58, 62, 69, 70, 81, 160, 161, 170 

Christianity in 59, 161, 173 

discovery of 142 

Eskimo of 143, 150, 151 

extinction of Norsemen in 39. 40 

Norse colony in 30-35, 64, 82-86 

population of 44 

Grenfell, W. T., cited 107, 1 14 

Grettir ». 32 

Grocland 62 

Guanches 15 

Guast, du, River 49 

Gudleif 's vo.vage 29, 54, 160 

Gudrid 28, T,2, 35, 50, 59, 60, 66, 69, T2, 81, 105, 112 

Gudrid's visit to Rome 87 

Guiot de Provins , zi 

Gulf of iMaine 114, 128, 131, 170 

Gulf of Mexico 3 

Gulf Stream 127 

Gunnbiorn's islets 2)2i 

Gwynedd, Owen 36 



XO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK I99 

PAGE 

Haconsson, John 65 

Haggard, H. Rider, cited 10 

Hagar, S., cited 7 

Haki and Hsekia, story of 90, 118, 123, 132 

Hakluyt, cited 89, 155 

Haliburton, R. C, cited 92, I53 

Hall o' the Side 58 

Hamilton Inlet 108, 141 

Hampton, New Hampshire, cross-marked stone at 49 

Harko's son 52 

Harpoons, Eskimo 139, 151, 157 

Harrisse, H., cited 116, 155 

Harshberger, J. W., cited 133, 134 

Hauk, Erlendsson 64, 67, 116, 143, 161 

Hauksbook Saga 56, 64, 66 

Haup, the name 138 

Hawaii, peopling of 9 

Hawes, C. H., cited 147 

Heimskringla 27, 43, 100, loi, 147, 161 

Helluland 29, 54, 56, 60, 63, 69, 72, loi, 106, 107, 112, 160, 162, 170 

Henry Hudson ( Bacon) 131 

Henry, Prince 9 

Heriolf 83 

Heriolfsness 40, 69, 81 

Hermannsson, H., bibliography by 63 

Hertzberg, cited 51, 167 

Higginson, T. W., cited 45. loi, 157 

Hill-tout, C, cited 7 

Hochelaga ^ 43, 57, I33 

Holand, H. R., cited 53 

Holm, G., cited 44, 144, 153 

Holmes, W. H., cited 2, 51 

Honduras, Mayas in 6, 13 

Honen inscription 63, 160 

Hop 69, 74, 118, 128, 129, 130, 132, 134, 13s, 136, 139, 141, 148, 149, 151, 

1 55, 160, 162, 163, 169, 170 

Hopedale 107 

Hope Island 119 

Hopeton inscription 44 

Hornaday (The Extermination of the American Bison) 148 

Horsford, Cornelia, cited 49 

Horsford, E. N., cited 8, 46, 47, 48, 55, 71, 136 

Housatonic River 6 

Howley, M. P., cited 53, 73, 108 

Hudson, Henr}', voyage of 71, 128 

Hudson Bay 5, 53, 54, 114 

Hudson River 6, 118, 134, 157 

Huitramannaland 54, 168 

Hull, Eleanor, cited 85 

14 



200 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

PAGE 

Humboldt, Alex, von, cited 7, 8, 18, 25, 74, 168 

Hunafloi Bay 135 

Hunting at Eastport 121 

Huron Indians 133 

Hutcheson, David i, 45 

Hutisark of Olaus Magnus 67 

Iberian Peninsula .• 8, 10 

Icaria 37 

Iceland 2, 8, 12, 13, 27, 28-35, 43, 50, 52, 55, 58, 61, 64, 66, 69, 70, 81, 

85, 86, 93, no. III, 117, 131, 133, 135, 136, 141, 142, 143, 151, 

159. 161, 162, 165, 166, 170, 171, 172 

Icelandic and Greenland house-sites 48, 95 

Icelandic Annals , 54. 61, 160, 162 

Icelandic-Celtic intermarriages 85, 86 

Icelandic literature 2, 31, 46, 59, 62. 76-81, 82, 85, 86, 162, 172 

Icelandic Secretaries (Hank's) 64 

Icelandic voyages 54, 58, 61, 64, 66, 70, 73, 112, 117, 124, 128, 129 

Icod, Canary Islands 15 

Igallico inlet 34 

Inca conquests 6, 156 

Incantation by Thorbiorg and Gudrid 82 

Indian Corn 57, i33. I34. I35. 148, i6l 

Indian River 47 

Indian royalties 92, 128 

Indians, American. (See also Skrellings) 2, 146 

Algonquian 5, 6. 7, 121, 128, 129. 140. 145, 157 

Asiatic origin of 2, 3, 147 

at Wineland 70, 7i, 141 

boats 151, 153 

Beothuk 5, 6. 42, 109, 121, 144, 153, 154, 156 

census of 4 

Chickahominy 4 

costumes 109, 125. 127, 128, 141, 149, 151, 155 

distribution of 5 

fisheries ». 47 

games 51 

giants 53 

inscriptions by 45, 49, 50, 54, 121 

. Iroquois 3. 4. 5, 50, 53, I45, I47 

languages of 3 

Maguaquadevic ' 120 

maize culture by 57, i34 

Malicete 120, 121 

Mattapony 4 

Micmac 5, 120 

Mound builders I49 

Muskhogean 3, 5 

Nansemond 4 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 201 

PAGE 

Nanticoke 47, 145 

Nascopie 109, 153 

Nez Perces 14S 

Ojibway 44, 50, 157 

Omaha 153 

origin of 2, 3, 147 

Osage 145 

Pamunkey 4 

Passamaquoddy 50, 51, 87, 117-121, 124, 152, 170 

Powhatan 4, 149 

Shoshonean 3, 5, 6 

Siouan 3, 5 

Souriqui 5, 120 

stature of 144, 145 

Susquehanna 14S, 148 

Tinne log 

unity of 146 

Wampanoag 45 

weapons of 154, 156, 158 

Welsh (alleged) 35 

wild rice cultivated by 56, 72 

Indian village site at Grand Manan 122 

Ingram's journey 42 

Innuit (American Eskimo) ... .2, 3, 5, 6, 34, 39, 51, 109, 121, 130-156, 160, 167 

Inscription concerning Antillia 19 

Inscription, Cryptic 15, 16 

Inscriptions, Norse, real or asserted 43-48, 50, 52, 60, 63, 160 

Insulle a Novo Repte 19 

Ipswich, " Norse '' stone work at 49 

Ireland 9, 12, 21, 23, 26-29, I59, 165 

Irish ancestors of Snorri 85 

Irish-Arab legends 14, 15 

Irish Church 27. 30 

Irish legends of discovery 10, 12. 13, 27, 57, 159, 165, 172 

Irish names 12 

Irish-Norse interchange of legends 8, 159, 162, 165 

Irish settlement at Iceland 27 

Iroquois Indians 3, 4, 5, 50, 53, 145, 147 

Isidore of Seville 57, 163 

Island-group of Antillia 19 

Island of Man or Mam , 21 

Island of St. Brandan 17 

Island of the Dragon 10, 18 

Island of the Hand of Satan 19, 21 

Island of the Seven Cities 22 

Islandic MS. of Wineland Sagas 68 

Isle of Birds 10 

Isle of Joy 12 



202 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

PAGE 

Isle of Sheep 10 

Islendingabok 28, 59, 142, 161, 165 

Italians in the Azores 11, 12, 20 

Jack, J. E., cited •. 52 

Jamestown, settlement 63 

Jenks, A. E., cited 56, 135 

Joncele Island • 25 

Jones Sound, Greenland 142 

Jonsson, Arngrim 62 

Jonsson, Gisli 62 

Jonsson, Finnur 68 

Kakortok church, Greenland 34 

Kamchatka, migration to America from 3, 147 

Karlsefni, Thorfinn. (See Thorfinn Karlsefni). 

Kayaks 130, 139, 150, 151, 153, 162 

Keelness 46, 69, 72, no, iir, 112, 160, 162 

Kennan, George, cited 147 

Kennebec River 6, 121, 128, 133 

Kensington " rune-stone " 53, 54 

Kilhwch and Olwen, story of 12 

King Philip 5 

Kirke, Mr., cited 152 

Kjallarness (Kiallarness, Keelness) 46, 69, 72, no, in, 112, 160, 162 

Knutson, Paul, expedition of 39 

Kohl, J. G., cited 16, 18, 40, 42 

Konungabok 59 

Koryak tribe in Kamchatka 147 

Kretschmer, K., cited 16, 19 

Kristni Saga 59, 64, 161 

Labrador 3, 29, 53, 100, 106, 107, 108, 114, 116, 117, 133, 141, 150, 151, 170 

current 94, no, 127 

La Cosa, Juan de 19, 20 

Lacrosse, game of 50, 167 

Laing, S., cited 27, 100, lor, 147 

Lake Superior canoes 152 

Landfalls, accidental, instances of 8, 9, 28, 29, 163 

Landing of Sea Tribes 7 

Landnamabok 27, 28, 59, 64, 69, 81, 161, 162 

Land-Rolf '. 61 

Languages in North America 4, 7, 1 1 , 25, 29 

Laplanders 141, 167 

Las Casas 20 

Las Desertas 16 

Law of Iceland 31 

Laxdaela Saga 85 

Legendary islands 12-30, 163, 166, 168 

Legname, L de ■ 9, 16, 22, 25, 163, 164 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 2O3 

PAGE 

Leif Ericsson 56, 63, 67, 68, 69, 71, 116, 122, 123 

discoverer of America 175 

first mention of 161 

landfall of 48 

Nansen on 159-168 

sent to Greenland 59, 60 

the Lucky 60, 61 

voyage historic i, 9 

voyages of 87-96, 159 

Wineland discovered by 83, 87-96, 161, 170 

Leif's-booths 48, 69, 70, 94 

Leif's crossing from Greenland to Europe 87 

Leif's lowest point as defined by Wine Grapes 93, 64, 170 

Leland, C. G., cited 50 

Lescarbot, cited 42, 56, 57, 71, 92, 123, 130, 133, 134, 150 

Lewes, Delaware 47 

Lewisburg, Pa 148 

Limerick 17, 21, 30. 172 

Little Falls of the Potomac 131 

Littoral tribes 7 

Living Island 15 

Lloyd's notes, cited 5, 36 

Longfellow, H. W., cited 44 

Long Island, New York 29 

Long Island, Nova Scotia 124 

Longer Saga of King Olaf the Saint 60 

Louisbourg 115 

Lubec, Maine 1 18, 124 

Lucas, F. W., cited 2>7i 38, 39> 40, 42 

Lyme grass 132 

Lyschander, Danish poet, cited 55 

Lysufirth 70 

Mabou River iii 

MacDougall, Alan 109 

McGee, W J, cited 1,5, 137 

Mcintosh, iMr., cited 51, 52, 115 

Madeira 9, 16, 21, 22, 25, 163, 164, 169 

Madeira, referred to in connection with legend of Diodorus 21 

Madoc, voyages of 14, 35, 7,^ 

Madonna, image of I5, 16 

Maelduin, voyage of 13, 14, 159 

Magdalen Islands 22, 117 

Magna Graecia 28 

Magnusson, Arne, supplies title to saga 65 

Magnusson, Morris and, cited 99 

Maguaquadevic 120 

Magrurin expedition 11, 106 

Maine 6, 50, •J2. 114, 116, 117, 123, 127, 145, 164 

Maize 57, I33, I34. I35, 148, 161 



204 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

PAGE 

Major, R. H., cited 33^ 37, 38, 40, I55 

Mallebarre 129 

Malicete Indians 120, 121 

Mallery, G., cited 44 

Malo, St 14 

Man de Satanaxio, La 19, 25 

Man (or Mam) Island 21, 25, 26 

Manitoba • 135 

Map of Beccaria (1435) — considered 19 

Benincasa ( 1482) — considered 19 

Bertran — considered 19 

Bianco ( 1436) — considered 19 

Catalan (1375) — considered 16 

Coastal elevation — considered 114 

da Napoli, Zuan, considered 11, 16, 18 

derelicts (Horsford) — considered 8, 71 

Fourteenth Century — considered 11 

Gaddiano (Atlante Mediceo 1351) — considered 16 

Juan de la Cosa — considered 19 

medieval times — considered 11, 14, 19 

Mercator (1595) — considered 22, 41, iii 

Ortelius — considered 41, 172 

Pareto ( 1455) — considered 19 

Pizigani Brothers (1367) — considered 16, 18, 21, 24 

Pomponius Mela — considered 16 

Prunes (1553) — considered 22 

relating to the New World (Nordenskjold) — considered 20 

Rosselli — considered 19 

Ruysch — considered 33 

Sebastian Cabot— considered ^, 155 

Sigurdr Stefansson — considered 29, 38, 62 

Stefansson (1590) 29, 38, 62, no, in, 135 

Weimar (mismarked 1424) — considered 19 

Wytfliet (1597) — considered Ill 

Zuan da Napoli — considered il 

March, Mary, Beothuk prisoner 144 

Margarie River iii 

Maria, the sloop 107 

Maritime Provinces 117, 121, 133 

Markham, Sir Clements 14, 106 

Markland. .. .29, 39, 54, 60, 61, 63, 69, 72, 108, 109, 141, 160, 162, 166, 167, 

170, 171, 172, 174 

Markland (the name) — d'Legname or Madeira 16, 17, 26 

Marsson, Ari 8, 29, 165 

Maryland 29, in, 112, 113. 131, 133, 135 

Massachusetts 47, 170 

Massachusetts Bay 132 

Mather, Cotton, cited 46, 137 

Mattapony Indians 4 

JNIausur wood 47, 61, 95 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 205 

PAGE 

Maya people 6, 156 

Mayan ruins 7 

Mayda ( Asmayda) 17, 25 

Meade, Bishop, cited 42 

Medieval maps — considered 11, 14, 19 

Mediterranean Sea 9 

Meinoires Societe Royale, etc 28, 39, 50, 55, 61, 68, 70, 71, 75, 92, 107, 

109, 112, 120, 130, 143, 152, 168, 172 

Menane (Manan) 119 

Merman, Eskimo 130 

Mernoc, search for 14 

Merrimack River 47 

Mexico 4, 6, 7, 133, 149, 156 

Valley of 7, 141 

Micmac Indians 5, 6, 42, 52, 120, 121, 133, 145, 146, 156 

Midiokul, Greenland 66 

Miller, Mr., cited 45 

Minnesota, " rune stone " in 53 

Miramichi 52 

Missile on pole 157, 158 

]\Iississippi Valley, Great Ireland in 29 

Mongoloid tribes 7 

Monhegan Island inscription 50 

Monsters of the sea 10, 15, 18, 21, 24 

Montauk, meaning of 138 

Montaup, meaning of 138 

Montorious, Brazil Isle 22 

Mont's de, colonists 49, 122 

Moon of Weird 151 

Mooney, James, cited i, 138, 157 

Moorish Conquest 22 

Morgan, L. H., cited 5 

Morris and Magnusson, cited 99 

Moulton's History of New York 94 

Mound-builders 5, 148, 149 

Mound near Indian River, Del 47 

Mount Desert Island 128 

Mount Hope 138 

Bay 44, 45, 131, 136, i37, 138, I39 

Munro, W. H., cited 131, 13S 

Muskhogean family 3, 5 

Mythical islands I-2-30, 166, 168 

Nain, Labrador 107 

Nansemond 4 

Nansen, Fr., cited.... 8, 9, 21, 22, ^;i, 50, 55, 60, 89, 96, 105, 109, 116, 119, 

141, 150, 158, 159, 160, 162, 167, 168, 170, 171 

Nansen's recognition of Norse discoveries in America 159, 160 

Nanticoke Indians 47, 145 

Nantucket Island 128, 131 



206 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

PAGE 

Napoli, Zuan da 11, 16 

Narragansett Bay 5, 45, 128, 131, 132, 136, 138, 145, 154 

Nascopie Indians 109, 153 

Nauset, Cape Cod 127, 128, 129, 132, 149, 151 

" Neck " as used along the Chesapeake no 

Nelson, E. W., cited 144 

New Brunswick 6, 51, 52, 72, 120, 123, 140 

New Hampshire 128 

New Jersey 29, 112, 113, 149, 169 

" New Lands " 61, 62 

New Madrid 115 

New Mexico 22 

Newport " tower," origin of 44 

New York, depression of land at 4, I37 

Nez Perces Indians 145 

Niagara, geological observations at 114 

Nicholas of Lynne 34 

Nicholas of Thingeyri 61, 167 

Nordenskjold, A. E., cited 19, 20, 21, 22 

Normans 9, 20, 127, 166, 174 

Norse Conquests in Wine countries 90 

Norse-Irish legends 8, 159, 162, 169, 172 

Norse ships 100, loi, 108, 1 12, 159 

Norse voyages i, 43, 54, 75, 87-96, 112, 117, 124, 128, 129, 139, 142, 159, 161 

Norsemen 2, 10, 27, 30, 50, 51, 52, 54, 59, 98, 99, 100, 109, 117, 118, 120, 

122, 131, 138, 141, 142, 147, 151, 154 

North America, peopling of 3, 4, 8, 26, 174 

North Head, Grand Manan 122 

Norton Sound 144 

Norumbega, city of 42, 46-48 

Nova Francia 56, 71, 130, I33. 134 

Nova Scotia 6, 37, 41, 52, 63, 72, 94, 112, 113, 116, 117, 123, 170 

Nova Seotian wine berries ^ 92 

Nutt, Alfred, cited 12, 13 

Ocean City, Md 137 

Ocean currents 9 

Ojibway Indians 157 

Ojibway interpretation of Dighton Rock inscription 44 

Ojibway myths 50 

Olaf sends Leif to Greenland 88 

Olaf Tryggvason 30, 31, 56, 59 

Olaus Magnus 18, 67 

Olson, Dr. J. E., cited i, 66, 68, 75, 102, 143 

Omaha Indian boats 153 

Ordericus Vitalis 54 

Orkney Islands 13, 27, 165 

Ortelius map considered 41, 172 

Osage Indians 145 

Osgood on Maritime Provinces 117 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 207 

PAGE 

Owen, Gwynedd 36 

Owens, Gutyn 2)7 

Oxney (Ox Island) 32 

Packard, A. S., cited 53, 100, 102, 106, 109, 114, 140 

Pamunkey Indians 4 

Passamaquoddy (Indians and Bay) 50, 51, 87, 117-121, 124, 152, 170 

Patterson, George, cited 144, 153 

Payne, E. J., cited 21 

Pemaquid, old ruins at 50 

Pennsylvania, bison in 148 

Penobscot River 6, 121, 123, 128 

People of the Polar North (Rasmussen) 153 

Peopling of North America 2, 3, 4, 8, 26, 172 

Periplus (Nordenskjold) 20 

Peru, sculptures in 7 

Petit Dieppe 20 

Phantom City 10 

Phenician voyages 8, 9, 10 

Philip, King 5 

Pico Island 16, 164 

Pictographs 7, 45, 46, 137, 150 

Pizigani map 16, 18, 21, 24 

Place names (transferred from Iceland) 79 

Plants of Wineland, The (Fernald) 91, 132 

Plutarch's account of ancient voyages 117 

Polynesian languages in America 7 

voyages 9 

Pomponius Mela 16 

Ponce de Leon 15 

Pool of Youth 15 

Poole, H. S., cited 115 

Porcupine Bank 23 

Porter's journal cited 51 

Porto Santo 16, 164, 166, 169 

Portsmouth Bay, Aquidneck 45 

Portsmouth, New Hampshire 129 

Portuguese discoveries 1 1, 20 

Powell, D., cited 36 

Powhatan Indians 4, 149 

Pre-Columbian voyages 7, 17 

Primaria Island 16 

Prince Edward's Island 22, 156 

Provins, Guiot de 37 

Prunes's map, considered 22 

Putnam, Professor, cited 50 

Rafn, C. C, cited 28, 29, 44, 60, "jt^. 74, 132, 133, 136 

Raleigh's Colony 35 



208 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

PAGE 

Rasmussen, V., cited 153 

Rau, C, cited 45 

Red Indian Lake 109 

Reeves, A. M., cited 29, 56, 59, 60, 61, 64, 66, 68, 71, 75, 102, 103, 107, 129 

Rehoboth Bay 47 

Relics of Norse Visits, alleged 43. 44, 45, 46, 48, 50, 51, 52 

Resland of Edrisi 38 

Reylla Island 19 

Rhode Island 5-45. UL ^33 

Rhys, Dr. John, cited 12 

Rice, wild 48, 56-58, 127, 135, 136, 138 

Richmond County, Nova Scotia 112 

Ringerike rime-stone 60, 160 

Rink, H. J., cited 33, 39, 43. 44, 9i, 95, 109, 120, 140 

Roanoke massacre I49 

Robinson, Captain 144 

Roc, The 15 

Rockall, peak of 23 

Roo, P. de, cited 14 

Rosselli (Pedro, Petrus), map, considered 19 

Rouen 74 

Routes of crossing Atlantic 8, 9 

Runic inscriptions (certain or apochryphal) 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 50, 53 

Rune stone 48, 50, 53 

Ruysch map considered 33 

Sable Island 156 

Saga, Bear Island to Straumey loi, 102 

experiences on and near Straumey 102, 103 

expedition to Gulf of St. Lawrence 104, 105 

expedition to Hop 124-126 

of Eric the Red. .. .56, 64, 65, 68, 74, no, in, 119, 129, 143, 161, 162, 166 

of Eric the Red analyzed 78-81 

Flateybook Wineland 64, 65, 66, 68, 70, 71, 74, 116, 143, 162 

of the Heath-slayings 31, 166 

of Olaf Tryggvason 66, 74, 143 

of Thorfinn Karlsefni. . . .56, 64, 65, 66, 68, 74, no, in, 119, 129, 

143. 157, 161, 162, 166 

of Thorgisl 82 

Thorhall the Hunter 103 

Thorhall's verses and departure 103 

withdrawal from Wineland, and Markland episode 105 

Sagas 2, 21, 56, 59, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 8r, 82, 85, 129 

(general review) 76-78 

Saghalien people 3, I47 

Saint Andrews 52 

Saint Anna 19 

Saint Brandan 13-16, 159 

Saint Croix, New Brunswick 122, 132 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 2O9 

PAGE 

Saint George, New Brunswick 120 

Saint John, New Brunswick 52 

Saint John Island 109, 155, 156 

Saint John River, New Brunswick 6, 118, 121 

Saint Johns, Newfoundland 1 14 

Saint Lawrence Basin 6. 92, 154 

Saint Lawrence, Gulf of 5, 22, 23, 29, 37, 52, 57, 62, 63, 69, 109, no, 

III, 162, 170 

Saint Lawrence River 6, 23, 121 

Saint Malo 14, 15 

Saint Mary's Ba}- 124 

Saint Michael's Island 10 

Saint Patrick 27 

Saintsbury, George, mentioned 91 

Sakonnet River or Strait 45. 136, 137 

Salvagio (Saluaga) Island 19, 21 

Santorem, Atlas of 19 

Sargasso Sea 11 

Satanaxio (Satanta), Island 19, 25, 26 

Saxons 9 

Schoolcraft, H. R., cited 44, 141, 157 

Sculpture, Chinese and Cambodian 7 

Sea-fishing 124 

Sea of Darkness 18, 174 

Sea-shores 4. 69, 80, 102, 113-116, 135, 137, 159, 160, 163, 164, 168 

Seal Cove 119 

Seals 125, 126, 162 

Selim of Barbary 42 

Settlements 5, 50, 58. 138, 169 

Shaler, Nathaniel S., cited 5, 9, 1 14, 148 

Shell-heaps 50 

Shipbuilding, ancient 9 

Ships of the Norsemen 100, lor, 108, 1 12, 159 

Shoals 117, 136, 137 

Shoshonean family 3, 5, 6 

Sinclair, Earl 38 

Siouan familj^ 3, 5 

Skeleton in armor 44 

Skene, W. F., cited 12 

Skin boats, Indian and Eskimo 139, 150-157 

Skrellings or Skraslings. .. .28, 54, 59, 87, 109, 127, 139, 141, 142, 143. 144, 

145, 149, 151, 152, 154, 155, 157, 158, 161, 166 

Slafter, Rev. ^Nlr.. cited 113 

Slaves in Iceland 32 

Sleds, Eskimo I39, iSl 

Slings, use of i39. I54-I57 

Smith, J. T.. cited 54 

Snsefelsness no 



2IO SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

PAGE 

Snorri the Priest 31, 59 

Snorri Thorbrandsson 60, 63, 151, 158 

Snorri Thorfinnsson 59, 60, 63, 72 

Snorri Thorfinnsson's birth in America 86, 87, 104 

Snorri Thorfinnsson's pedigree 85 

Sommart, island of 16 

Soto, de, in Carolina 149 

South America 24, 25, 146, 156, 174 

peopling of 7, 8 

Souriquois (Micmac) Indians 5, 120 

Spain 9, 24 

Spaniards of Canaries 16 

Spanish, Chilian 35 

explorers 53, 171 

searchers for De Soto 49 

Speculum regale I43 

Speed of ships 107, 108, 112 

Spencer, Herbert, cited 157 

Spoils of Annwn 12 

Standish, iMiles, mentioned 157 

Stefansson map (1590) 29, 38, 62, no, in, 135 

Stephens, J. L., cited 10 

Stephens, Th., cited 35, 36, 37 

Storm, Dr. G., cited.... 28, 39, 55, 61, 62, 68, 70, 71, 75, 87, 92, 107, 109, 

112, 120, 130, 143, 152, 168, 172 

Storm-driven mariners 8, 21, 69, 89, 163. 169 

Stone giants 53 

Strachey, W., cited 4, 35, 57, 58, 93, 120, 127, 133, 145, 161 

Strait of Cabot 23, no, 171 

Strand oats 94, 95, 132, 133 

Straumey 69, 87, 112, 123, 124, 130, 139, 162, 164 

Straumfiord 69, 73, 74, 112, 117-119, 123, 124, 129, 130, 139, 162, 164 

Streams, ocean 117, 1 18, 124 

Sturlunga Saga (Vigfusson's preface to) 59 

Sunken land of Bus 17 

Susquehanna Indians 145, 148 

Sweyn, King 58 

Talbot County, Md 154 

Taliessin 12 

Tampico 141 

Taunton River 44, 46, 136, 137 

Teneriffe 14, 15, 25, 169 

Terciera 24, 25 

Thalbitzer, V., cited 6, 39, 73, 109, 140, 143 

Thevet cosmographer 10 

Thomas, C, cited 7 

Thorbiorg 82 

Thorbiorn Vifilsson 32, 60, 67, 81 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 211 

PAGE 

Thorbrand Snorrason 49, 63, 155, 158 

Thorfinn, Earl of the Orkneys 28, 29 

Thorfinn Karlsefni 35, 48, 50, 54, 69, 97, 150, 151, 167, 169 

discoveries by 63, 116, 170, 173, 174, 175 

expedition to Hop 124-139 

genealogy of 85 

marries Gudrid 70 

Saga of 26, 56, 66, 124 

voyage to Wineland interpreted 106-124 

Thorgunna of Frodis-Water 88 

Thorgunna of the Hebrides 88 

Thorhall the Hunter 102, 103, 104, no, in, 122, 123, 124 

Thori the Eastman 67, 69 

Thorkell Gellison 28, 30, 58, 152, 165 

Thorkel of Heriulfsness 82 

Thorlac Runolfsson 59 

Thorstein Ericsson 52, 69, 72, 83, 84, 170 

Thorstein the Swarthy 83, 84 

Thorvald Ericsson 28, 35, 49, 69, 70, ^2, 129 

Thor-worship 102, 122 

Tidal measurements along American coast 116, 117, 118, 124, 137 

Tierra del Fuego 156 

Tinne Indians 109 

Titicaca, Lake 156 

Tiverton inscription 45 

Todd's Point n8 

Tools common to Scandinavia and N. E. America 51 

Torfseus 74, 173 

Toscanelli 9, 20 

Tower of Norumbega 46 

Traill, Catherine Parr, cited 135 

Trumbull, J. H., cited 138 

Turner on Eskimo stature 144 

Tusket Islands 119, 126 

Upernavik 143 

Umiaks 153 

Uniped 28, 105, 129, 130, 131, 162 

Ungava 143 

Uplift of coast 1 14 

Usumacinta Valley 6 

Utopia Lake 52 

Vaca, Cabeza de 41 

Vencidor, The 107 

Venezuela 154 

Verrazano 49, 57, 128, 132, 136, 138, 145 

Vespucius 165, 174 



212 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 

PAGE 

Vifil 32, 67 

Vigfusson, G., cited 28, 29, 30, 34, 58, 66, 75, 82 

Viking ships 100 

Vikings 98-100 

Vinland (Wineland) 1, 4, 26, 29, 30, 35, 43, 46, 52, 53-70, -jz, 74, 83, 

87, 89, 101-104, 110-112, 123, 131, 132, 133, 142, 147, 159-173 

Vinland hit GoSa 166 

Vinlandia 63 

Virginia 4, 29. 47, 58, 74, 113. 132, I49 

Vivaldi brothers, voyages of 1 1 

Vlandoren 25 

Volcanoes I5 

Voyage of Bran 12 

Voyage of Maelduin 12 

Voyage of St. Brandan 13. I4. ^5 

Voyages of the Northmen 1, 43, 54, 58, 61, 64, 66, 70, Ti, 75, 87-96, 

112, 117, 124, 128, 129, 139, 142, 159, 161, 169, 173 

Wallace, A. R 114 

Wallace, D I43 

Wallace, James, cited 8, 177 

Wallace, W. S 108 

Walrus tusks, tribute in 39 

Wampanoags of Rhode Island 45 

Washington City 4. 48. 93 

Watertown, Mass , 47 

Weare, G. E., cited I55 

Weimar Map 19 

Weirs 47 

Welsh Indians (alleged) 35 

Welsh navigation il 

West Indies 21 

Westall 10 

Whalers 2 

Whales 121 

Whitbourne, Richard 108. 109, 153 

White Men's Land 2^, 30, 165 

Whitesark 67 

Wicomico Indians, The I45, 146 

"Wild rice" in America 48, 56-58. 127, 135, 136, 138 

" Wild sea " border of Wineland 63 

" Wild wheat " 94, 95 

Wineland or Vinland 1, 4. 26, 29, 30, 35. 43, 46, 52-70, I2, 74, 83, 87, 

89, 101-104, 110-112, 123, 131, 132, 133, 142, 147 159-173 

Wineland Voyages 67, 131, 159, 160, 162, 167, 169 

Wine-making without appliances 93 

Winsor, Justin, cited 7, io9 

Wonderstrands, the 69, 80, 102, 104, 112, 116 

Wynken de Worde I3 



NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 213 

PAGE 

Yahgans 156 

Yarmouth, marked rocks at 52 

Yukon Eskimo 144 

Zea mays (Indian corn) 95, 133 

Zeno narrative 8, 17, iJ, 150, 168 

Zichmi of Frisland 38 

Zimmer, Dr., cited 12 

Zodiac signs in Mayan cities 7 

Zuan da Napoli map 11, 16, 18 



^ 



